Horoscopes for the dead Poems

Collins writes of time and death with humor and whirligig images and wordplay so unexpected and delectable, reading his poetry is like watching a magician transform ordinary objects a coin, a card into something breathtaking out of thin air. Collins likes to focus on small, unobtrusive beings like a mouse or a squirrel and informs us that he is the tortoise, not the hare. He steals an hour to walk up a hill and sit on a rock the size of a car, which he then imagines once moved along / in the monstrous glacial traffic of the ice age. The poet loves his dog's long smile, and thinks of Dante in a cavernous mattress store. In this piquant collection's hilarious and sweet title poem, Collins riffs on newspaper horoscopes and bemused memories of his beloved dead. A hangover inspires misanthropy, while everyday heartbreaks lead to droll confessions. Including thoughts on his true vocation, which is keeping an eye on things / whether they existed or not, / recumbent under the random stars. Collins rules as a charming master of mischievous wisdom.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist

The 1990s belonged to Billy Collins in the same way that the 1980s belonged to Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten). Collins's gently ironic, gently elegiac work-the mirror image of, say, Jonathan Franzen's suburban delvings-has slowly constructed a pitch-perfect purgatory, and this death-themed ninth collection seems to want to make it as literal as possible: it opens as the speaker stands "before the joined grave of my parents" and asks, "What do you think of my new glasses?" In a poem titled "Hell," the speaker has "a feeling that is much worse/ than shopping for a mattress in a mall,// of greater duration without question,/ and there is no random pitchforking here,/ no licking flames to fear,/ only this cavernous store with its maze of bedding." That this feeling is never quite articulated over the course of 50-odd poems is not to its detriment: despite the prosaic settings and everyday language, Collins is after the big questions: of life, death, and how to live. But the world is not of his making, and his is a temperament oddly suited to a world where "the correct answer" to questions like why the stars appear as they do, strike "not like a bolt of lightning/ but more like a heavy bolt of cloth." (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

In his ninth book of poems (after Ballistics), Collins recalls a boyhood passion for collecting: "lantern, spyglass, tomahawk...in the order you would need them in," a sweet beginning with ominous implications. And there is a sharp edge to his fabrications in this volume, which begins with a verbal prank at his parents' grave, ends with the last poem he will ever write, and includes a catalog of his unborn children. His Florida is not Paris; his friend does not have cancer, nor is she human; and the dead don't do anything that appears here in their absurd, generic horoscopes (nor would they have even when alive). In the empty lawn chairs, "no one is resting a glass or placing a book facedown," and the most delightful companions are the cemetery dead. As if feeling naughty, the poet lounges poolside and regards a floating rubber version of himself: "a cool ducky, nonchalant/ little dude on permanent vacation." Ultimately, these absorbing games can't deny the fundamental calamity: grief seeps between the cracks. VERDICT Witty bleakness from a former poet laureate and one of the country's most popular poets.--Ellen Kaufman, Baruch Coll., New York (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.