Travel and death are explored in this collection. The ordinary with a dash of whimsy. This is the kind of book you dip into repeatedly as you go through later life. 

Copy provided by the publisher and NetGalley

Billy Collins has once again delivered a collection of poems that are in turn heart-warming, soul-uplifting, tear-jerking, and charming, proving the Poet Laureate of the United States has not lost his knack for poignant, beautiful turns of phrase and allegory.

I discovered Billy Collins when I was in college, and his natural style captivated me. His poems feel effortless and his perspective is one I savor, knowing the experience of reading his poetry is one I will relish.

Sometimes he strikes a poignant tone, as in "Life Expectancy," forcing you to pause alongside Collins to ponder mortality. Or perhaps he's sharing an observation of marriage.

Or there can be a pointed jab, as in "Mice," when Collins watches a neighbor's house burn, causing mice to seek new lodging:

"They all ran across the snow-
covered lawn to find places
to hide in their new home;
then later they discovered the kitchen,
which was like Columbus discovering 
America, because the kitchen was already there."

(That feels particularly relevant today, as the country marks Indigenous People's Day today, at the time of my writing.)

There is his characteristic humor, as found in "Banana School" or "A Terrible Beauty," the latter being a tongue-in-cheek competition to determine the cruelest month (again, so prescient for 2020).

When I sit to read poetry from a poet I can trust, the experience is one of pleasure. I feel my whole body relax, my breathing deepen. I slow down to savor the words and be caught off-guard on the journey, appreciating the view Collins has of the world and his willingness to share his insights with the rest of us.

(I received a digital ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.)

Billy Collins is one of those poets whose writing is so clean, so clear and seemingly effortless that I almost make the mistake of thinking, “I could do that.” Almost. Because of course I know that his kind of natural writing is the hardest of all to pull off well—and in “Whale Day,” Collins’ most recent collection, he does it again. Take the poem “Listening to Hank Mobley Around 11 O’Clock After a Long Fun Boozy Dinner, the Four of Us, at Captain Pig’s, Our Favorite Restaurant in Town.” Collins writes about “having sailed some time ago / into the quiet cardigan harbor of my life” and I am immediately struck by how perfect that image is—how it tells me everything I need to know about the narrator and the kind of life he led before and leads now. Images like this abound throughout the book—“the marbled silence of the desert” in the poem “Arizona”; a “fountain pen drawing nectar from the black flower of an ink bottle” in the poem “My Father’s Office.” But most of Collins’ poems here don’t rely on gorgeous imagery; instead, they traffic in the everyday, as Collins turns his sharply observant eye on all sorts of subjects, imbuing even serious ones such as cremation, aging and death with lightness and humor. I loved this book, and ended up re-reading half of it as I was paging through to write this review; I’m sure I’ll go back to these poems again and again. 

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for providing me with an ARC of this title in exchange for my honest review.

Lovely poems - totally accessible and such an enjoyable read.  Great book to pick up often and re-read some poems. Bravo, Billy Collins!

One of my favorite Billy Collins collections so far! So much wistfulness, plus his wonderful mix of the everyday tiny moments exploded into larger questions. I read this as an e-book first, and that was great for highlighting favorite lines. But I also can't wait to get the print edition to savor.

Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

By now, readers familiar with Billy Collins work know what they’re going to get — a seemingly (seemingly only) effortless conversational style, a light touch, a focus on the small everyday moments of life that sometimes spirals outward into larger moments of reflection, not so densely “poetic” in the fashion many general readers think of poetry (rhyme, metaphor, obscurity, language play, etc.).  The same holds true for his newest collection, Whale Day.  Which means if you liked Billy Collins, you’ll enjoy Whale Day, and if you’ve found in the past Collins is not your cup of tea (which he drinks several times in this collet ion btw), then you’ll probably want to pass.

There’s an ease and clarity to Collins poems here, as well as some humor, and just about all are suffused with warmth.  There’s also an overlay of a kind of “happy sadness” (it’s poetry, so the oxymoron is fine) to many of the poems, a number of which deal with the passing of friends and family (or pets) and the looming morality of the speaker, death being, as he says in “Vivace”, “the magnetic north of poetry.”  The tone is less grim or frightened than fondly reminiscent or resigned.

In “Arizona”, he hopes to have a “deathbed” to worry upon, lucky enough to avoid “a tall death-wave or a deep death-lake/or a dizzying death-cliff, a death-gun, or a death knife.”  In “Downpour,” the speaker and his spouse recall “all of the friends who had died so far” which leads him to write them down on the back of the shopping list. The next day he realizes he had forgotten “Terry O’Shea/as well as the bananas and the bread “leaving him a “soaking wet man/bearing bags of groceries, /walking as if in a procession of the dead.”

In “Lakeside Cottage: Ontario”, a flight of geese flying low over a dock is cause to recall the parents swimming in the lake, “before they both died/only months apart, as if Jack followed Mary’s lead” an idea that circles back around to the image of those geese “heading who knows where . . . the leader pointing the way with its neck/extended, as if he were pulling the others along.”

One of my favorite poems in the collection, “My Father’s Office, John Street, New York City, 1953”,  mourns not just people but things, a litany of devices and objects  lost to “the gaping maw of obsolescence . . . No more thick tear-off calendars/the days disappearing one page at a time/No more fountain pen drawing/nectar from the black flower of an ink bottle . . . the hat rack the hats they held/and gone the men themselves and gone my father/gone my father as well.”  

Collins’ easy conversational tone sometimes lulls you, so you’re caught all the more by wondrous surprise at those moment like the image of the ink bottle as a “black flower” or the dirge-like repetition of “gone my father/gone my father as well.” Or by his subtle use of sound, as in another poem set at a Chinese restaurant, where speaker and partner “turned to our cookies/cracking the brittle shells/then rolling into little balls/the tiny scrolls of our destinies.”  The consonance of the hard “c” sound in “cookies” and “cracking” and “scrolls”, the rhyme of “rolling” and “scrolls”, of “brittle” and “little.” He’s often sneaky that way.

And sometimes he’s much more open and direct, much more playful and laughing. “cubit” misheard as “Cupid,” the way tiny bottles of hotel shampoo and conditioner let the speaker of “Hotel Rex” think of himself as a “giant, a colossus,” albeit a benevolent one.  It’s impossible not to smile at the title, the image of the speaker standing tall.  The joyful playfulness of these moments do a nice job of balancing out the mortality theme, as does Collins love of the everyday world, full of warmth and wonder, family and friends (living or recalled), a world he both inhabits and creates for us: “so plentiful/everything billowing with our love.”

I don't understand how Billy Collins is simultaneously so effortless and conversational and at the same time able to slip easily into the universal and profound.  Maybe he gets there by being so specific; his poems are  conversational and direct but by focusing intently on a specific situation or moment in time, it allows him to get to larger truths without being didactic.  These poems are more melancholy and deal more with death, but Collin's humor and wryness still are in ample evidence.  A collection that is breezy, profound, and well worth reading.

I enjoyed this wonderful book of rich, detailed imagery. Loved this one!

Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for my ARC. All opinions are my own.

Another good collection from Collins. Not quite as snarky as some of his earlier collections, but it's strong. There were some wonderful moments, a few gems. These are more subdued, more reflective, but they are good, Collins poems. Poetry lovers new and old will appreciate them.

A luminous book by one of the greatest living poets. Focusing on the spiritual journey late in life, and invoking some of the classic imagery of the whale as longing, the unknown, and the confrontation between humans and the vastness outside of ourselves, Collins crafts something strangely and exquisitely beautiful.

“... Are we not the seekers of order, I thought,
as we follow the lines in our palms
0r connect the dots of the stars to form a bear in the sky?”
- excerpt from "The Symphony Orchestra of San Miguel de Allende"

“Today I was awakened by strong coffee
and the awareness that the earth is busy with whales
even though we can’t see any
unless we have embarked on a whale watch,
which would be disappointing if we still couldn’t see any.”
- excerpt from "Whale Day"


Whale Day: And Other Poems is a new collection of more than fifty pieces from Billy Collins, former U.S. Poet Laureate. While the pieces cover a range of themes, I found the most striking pieces to be about death and dying, living and appreciating simple moments, and the ordinary joys of love. True to his unique style of writing, Collins sticks to storytelling, making him an accessible poet to those intimidated by the craft, and sprinkles in humor in the everyday and mundane. While this collection felt more serious than others I have read of his, I did appreciate how cohesive the book was and his commentary on his own creative process in writing poetry.

A few of the poems that resonated with me:
The Function of Poetry
Down on the Farm (Collins considers why fainting goats faint, which was fun)
Mice
Whale Day (how even in our own personal existence the world is doing other things, life goes on around us, excerpt above)
She’s Gone (being with your partner is like the drawings where you spot the differences - Collins states that he is the one on the right with the items missing which was especially lovely)
Downpour
Me First

[CW: discussions of death and dying, death of friends and family]

Thank you to Random House, Billy Collins, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this collection.

In this collection of poetry by Collins, we get a glimpse of the poet growing older, and a little bitter. Much of the poetry focuses on age and aging, nostalgia for youth and past times. As is almost always the case with Collins's collections, there's also quite a lot fo poetry about poetry--about the writing process, about inspiration, and about what makes a text a poem. Long-time readers will be pleased; newcomers will find themselves either charmed or put off by Collins's meta-narratives and self-reflection. I found a number of the poems moving or interesting; others seemed tossed off with less care, written out of need for a deadline, maybe, and less imbued with thoughtfulness or meaning.

Billy Collins has a way with words that disarms reluctant readers and entertains. His poetry has been described as accessible, but it is more complex than that. He can still entice non-poetry readers to take a moment to enjoy a poem. This book of poems is more focused on endings than beginnings, but humor is still a current running beneath the ice.

Brilliant, as always! Collins knows how to express thoughts the reader didn't even know they were thinking/feeling. Ordinary days become extraordinary in this poet's hands.

Billy Colins the poet extraordinary has written another beautiful collection.Introspective poems on mortality life and of course poems full of humor.His latest collection one to read slowly enjoy each poem.#netgalley#randomhouse

What a wonderful book of poetry! I have only read a couple of Billy
Collins books of Poetry prior to this one.  That said, this one does not
let you down at all.  Each one is easy to read and tells a good story. They
seem to mature as he does.  I've always thought Billy Collins' books would
make a great gift for friends or family. 

Thank you so much, Billy Collins, Random House Publishing Group - Random House,
and NetGalley, for the chance to read and review this wonderful book of Poetry!

This collection of poems by Billy Collins seems a bit more introspective than his others, more focused on aging and the death of friends.

I like Billy Collins and his ability to use humor and playful language to delve into serious topics. This definitely felt like a long meditation on death, but again, with his signature charm and slight absurdity. I wish I could have given 3.5 stars because I did enjoy it, but nothing stuck with me or struck me. I saved no quotes or notes, and so I went with 3 stars. If you're a Billy Collins fan then it's definitely worth a read!

In his latest collection, Billy Collins's trademark wit and humor are in evidence, but he is more focused on his and others' mortality than usual. Billy Collins is always a delight to read and that holds true here, too. His voice is always welcome.