Good for What Ails You: Poet Laureate Billy Collins Opens Fall Literary Season

摘要

A Billy Collins reading is an antidote for today's troubled and tumultuous world. He condenses humor into the last couple of beats before a pause in his poems, which is particularly effective when read aloud. There's a certain ba-duh-bump to the meter of his verse. He drew more than a few laughs at the opening reading of his second term as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress on Oct. 9, His droll humor comes through in many of his poems, including "No Time": In a rush this weekday morning, I tap the horn as I speed past the cemetery where my parents are buried side by side under a smooth slab of granite. Then, all day long, I think of him rising up to give me that look of knowing disapproval while my mother calmly tells him to lie back down.