Ballistics - by Billy Collins (Paperback)

About the Book

In this moving and playful collection, Collins touches on an array of subjects--love, death, solitude, youth, and aging--delving deeper than ever before into the intricate folds of life.

Book Synopsis

In this moving and playful collection, Billy Collins touches on an array of subjects--love, death, solitude, youth, and aging--delving deeper than ever before into the intricate folds of life.

Review Quotes

"Collins reveals the unexpected within the ordinary. He peels back the surface of the humdrum to make the moment new."
-The Christian Science Monitor

"Billy Collins demonstrates why he is one of our best poets, with his appealing trademark style: a self-deprecating charm, playful wit and unexpected imaginative leaps."
-San Antonio Express-News

"By careful observation, Collins spins comic gold from the dross of quotidian suburban life. . . . Chipping away at the surface, he surprises you by scraping to the wood underneath, to some deeper truth."
-Entertainment Weekly

"A poet of plentitude, irony, and Augustan grace."
-The New Yorker

"It is difficult not to be charmed by Collins, and that in itself is a remarkable literary accomplishment."
-The New York Review of Books

"Clever, subtle and engaging."
-Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

About the Author

Billy Collins is the author of twelve collections of poetry including The Rain in Portugal, Aimless Love, Horoscopes for the Dead, Ballistics, The Trouble with Poetry, Nine Horses, Sailing Alone Around the Room, Questions About Angels, The Art of Drowning, and Picnic, Lightning. He is also the editor of Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry, 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day, and Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds. A former Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York, Collins served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003 and as New York State Poet from 2004 to 2006. In 2016 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Florida with his wife Suzannah.