The Rain in Portugal

Billy Collins

26 January 2017
9781509834266
120 pages

Synopsis

The New York Times Bestseller

From former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins comes a twelfth collection of poetry offering nearly fifty new poems that showcase his trademark generosity, wit, and imaginative play.

The Rain in Portugal - a title that admits he's not much of a rhymer - sheds Collins's ironic light on such subjects as travel and art, cats and dogs, loneliness and love, beauty and death. His tones range from the whimsical - 'the dogs of Minneapolis . . . / have no idea they're in Minneapolis' - to the elegiac in a reaction to the death of Seamus Heaney. A student of the everyday, here Collins contemplates a weathervane, a still-life painting, the calendar, and a child lost at a beach. His imaginative fabrications have Shakespeare flying comfortably in first class and Keith Richards supporting the globe on his head. By turns entertaining, engaging, and enlightening, The Rain in Portugal amounts to another chorus of poems from one of the most respected and familiar voices in the world of poetry.

[Collins] at his finest
...Imaginative thinking gives this collection its richness.... The work also shows a variety of styles...[that] provide both pleasure and a vivid example of how one's thoughts, when unrestrained, can lead to unexpected destinations
Poets on the best-seller list remain as rare as albino deer, but one who does turn up...is Billy Collins