Book description
However arresting, outlandish, or hilarious, the poems in Horoscopes
for the Dead are typically prompted by the familiar things of the world:
dogs, stars, food, love, and marriage as well as life's local triumphs
and disappointments, joys and shames. Collins's gift is to unlock the
mysterious in the ordinary, and he is always careful to take his reader
with him. Indeed, no other living poet has done more to reengage and
revitalize poetry's readership, or so deservedly earned its trust. Few
poets have his ability to mix bold, unadorned statements with lyric
invention and imaginative richness. And here in these new poems,
Collins's inimitable tone - wry, smart, funny, and wise - takes on a
darker shade, as the poems declare a deep awareness of transience and
mortality. The result is the revelation of a world more precious, more
fragile, richer in colour and form than ever. Praise for Billy Collins
'A writer . . . fully aware of his work's power to delight' New York
Times 'A poet of plentitude, irony, and Augustan grace' New Yorker
Billy Collins has received fellowships from the New York Foundation
for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim
Foundation. A professor of English at Lehman College, he was appointed
Poet Laureate of the United States for 2001 to 2003, and Poet Laureate
of New York State from 2004 to 2006.
