Ballistics: Poems

If you know his work, you will not be dissapointed with Billy's latest effort - still beautiful writing, witty, clever and evocative.

If you don't know Billy Collins' work - this is a great place to start!

I've just recently read Ballistics and prior to this I have read all of Collins's other collections of poems, over the years. So I have really followed him, thanks to a friend introducing me to his work. And not only have I followed him, but he has very much influenced the way I myself write poetry.
I would say that the ease with which Collins handles commonplace events and the gentle way he looks in, around, and over any topic at his disposal, it has all helped me to see the beauty and wonder that are a part of everyday experience. And because of this, he has inspired me to do my own writing.
Some commentators are saying that he has "hit a dead end" with Ballistics. Or, "The very things that make him popular, accessible and clever -- especially around the time of `Picnic, Lightning' -- have solidified into concrete, and like a machine endlessly repeating itself he turns out poems with subtle color variations but which remain in the same mold." [Sean Patrick Hill in The Oregonian].
I will agree that Ballistics seems to me "typical" Collins stuff. But, having said that, it is still such rich and wonderful work.
Why fix what ain't broke?
And I think that with Billy Collins a key word is "accessible." Were I to be introducing someone to the world of contemporary poetry, it would be Billy Collins I was gift-wrapping.
And what about serenity.
For this, just listen to the endings, the last stanzas of so many of his poems here in Ballistics. The way he describes what The Great American Poem might "sound" like:

I once heard someone compare it
to the sound of crickets in a field of wheat
or, more faintly, just the wind
over that field stirring things that we will never see.

From The Lamps Unlit -

And who cares if it takes me all day
to write a poem about the dawn
and I finish in the dark with the night -
some love it best - draped across my shoulders.

Or this, from one of my own favorites, Old Man Eating Alone in a Chinese Restaurant -

And I should mention the light
which falls through the big windows this time of day
italicizing everything it touches -
the plates and teapots, the immaculate tablecloths,
as well as the soft brown hair of the waitress
in the white blouse and short black skirt,
the one who is smiling now as she bears a cup of rice
and shredded beef with garlic to my favorite table in the corner.

Billy Collins is the epitome [in our day] of the magnification of words.
He takes the everyday and presents it as once in a lifetime.
The above-mentioned critic went on to point out that it is unfortunate that with Ballistics, Collins has failed to "expand, explore, and attempt to break new ground."
Others of us can be somewhat grateful.

In an interview in June 2006 for "Guernica Magazine" *, Billy Collins talked about his conscious decision to move from being a serious and difficult to understand poet to one who wrote clear, accessible poems, "I think I kind of bought into the assumption that poetry had to be extremely gloomy and incomprehensible, or nearly so. And when I wrote I took on the role of the despondent and difficult to understand person. Whereas in life, I was easy to understand, to the point of being simple-minded maybe.

The change came I would say when I began to dare to be clear, because I think clarity is the real risk in poetry because you are exposed. You're out in the open field. You're actually saying things that are comprehensible, and it's easy to criticize something you understand."

OK...I confess: I like his poetry because it is so understandable. A professor of English I once had looked down on poets who were easy to understand and dismissed them as being either lazy or lacking in talent or intellectual light-weights or all three. He'd sometimes say things about a poem written by a poet he didn't particularly care for as being "mellifluous and written with pastels." I'm sure, if he's still teaching, he's saying that to "unsophisticated" undergrads (just like I was back then) about the poetry of Billy Collins. Fortunately, I've grown up and am still unsophisticated enough to enjoy poetry that I can understand and even chuckle at knowing the poet is saying something funny on purpose. Such is the poetry of Billy Collins, for me at least.

I do own most of his poetry books and enjoy many of his poems. The reason I gave BALLISTICS only 4 stars instead of 5 is because I don't think the poems contained within are as good as those in previous books. I do like "Addendum" (p.70), especially the first stanza: "What I forgot to tell you in that last poem/ if you were paying attention at all/ was that I really did love her at the time." It gets my attention right off and then the poem goes on to a remembrance of a love long since over, but still pleasant to recall. On the other side of the poetic coin is a very short poem called "Divorce" (p.98) that is only 18 words (4 lines) total and seems silly to me: "Once, two spoons in bed,/ now tined forks/ across a granite table/ and the knives they have hired." It's got the feeling of something dashed off while sipping coffee at the breakfast table. Here, I think, the poet tries too hard to be cute.

My favorite book of Collins' poems is THE ART OF DROWNING. I like the poem "Philosophy" (pp.69-70) in particular. "I used to sit in the cafe of existentialism,/ lost in a blue cloud of cigarette smoke,/ contemplating the suicide a tiny Frenchman/ might commit by leaping from the rim of my brandy glass." He goes on to write about other philosophers and schools of philosophical thought with tongue firmly imbedded in cheek. There are poems in that volume dealing with such earthbound topics as jazz, food, cigarettes, poetry workshops, reading in a hammock...and every one is comprehensible.

My opinions aside, I do recommend BALLISTICS to Billy Collins fans and to anyone who mistakenly thinks poetry is supposed to be stuffy and just for eggheads or pompous college profs. To those sophisticates out there, I say, open this small 110 page volume of verse and enjoy!

Each of Billy Collins's new books outdoes its predecessor. It's refreshing
to read and understand contemporary poetry in these days of poets attempting to show us how intelligent they are at the expense of their humanity. There is never any of that with Collins's work. Straightforward poems with fresh metaphor and simile are his trademark. After reading any of his collections I am always looking forward to more. One can become addicted to his wit and irony.

Richard Brown

I am one of these people who discovered Billy Collins when I bought his previous poetry collection, "The Trouble With Poetry". I loved that collection so much I re-read it again as soon as I had finished reading it the first time around. Finally, a poet who made sense! I eagerly awaited publication of his new book, but I was very disappointed with "Ballistics". The book isn't bad, so many readers might enjoy it, but Collins comes across as full of himself and his witty remarks fall flat.

The poems in the first two "chapters" of the book are quite ordinary, I felt, after the first signature poem about the reader, which was very good (Collins always starts his collections with such a poem). I was shocked when I realized that the poem "Ballistics", which gives the book its title, describes the author's joy at recognizing, in a photograph, the book of a competitor (a poet he doesn't like) being pierced by a bullet. I felt that type of attitude was unseemly coming from the most popular poet of his generation (and most popular by a landslide on top of that). He is selling many more copies and is a lot better off than his rivals. Does he really need to gloat? Quality picks up at chapter 3, and the good poems you might have read excerpts of in magazines or reviews come from that part of the book (chapter 3 and later): "On the death of a next-door neighbor" and "Baby listening", for instance.

But Collins can't help mention in another poem that he has a girlfriend he is driving to at 7.45am on a weekday because he has decided to sleep with her, and she'll arrive at work "shortly before noon" because of that, but hopefully her boss will like Proust and as a result forgive her. Uh, what? Collins stopped being a teenager a while ago and would do well to remember that little detail.

All in all, there are some good poems but it looks like the poet's success is going to his head. If you really want to buy the book, buy it when it comes out in paperback.