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Water, Water

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Water, Water

Written by: Billy Collins
Narrated by: Billy Collins
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About this listen

Read by the author, Billy Collins

'Among the best poems that Collins has ever written' – NPR

In Water, Water Billy Collins writes with joy and wonder about the beauties and ironies of everyday life. The best poems, he believes, begin in clarity and end with a hint of the sublime: A cat learns to drink from a swimming pool. An astronaut recites Emily Dickinson in space. Here is a writer devotedly in love with the world around him, fascinated by its pleasures but generously sensitive of its pains.

Ever a laureate of the oblique, Collins is especially sensitive to disappearances and acts of concealment, sketching objects by the outlines their absence leaves: ‘Everything in this hard place’, reflects one voice in ‘Crying in Class’, ‘is designed to disappear.’ From grief’s soft echoes, to the atheist equally afraid of heaven and hell, Collins remains as keenly vigilant of the light as he does the shadows which dance at its edges.

‘A poet of plenitude, irony, and Augustan grace’ The New Yorker

'Witty, wry and tender when it hurts, Water, Water is a pleasure to read and easy to give' – The Washington Post

 Death, Grief & Loss Love Poetry Themes & Styles United States World Literature

Critic Reviews

Collins is his own most eloquent critic. In a poem bearing the stripped down title of, "Your Poem," he suggests that one of the go-to emotions in his work is: "buoyant ease in the shadow of mortality". This whole collection is filled with poems that strike that rare attitude. And, some of them, like "Emily Dickinson in Space," are among the best poems that Collins has ever written.
America's favourite poet
Billy Collins’ medium is a rare amalgam of accessibility and intelligence. I’d follow this man’s mind anywhere. Expect to be surprised (Michael Donaghy, Forward Prize-winning author of Conjure )
Billy Collins is one of my favourite poets in the world (Carol Ann Duffy, former Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom)
Chatty, witty, wholly dependable
Smart, his strings tuned and resonant, his wonderful eye looping over the things, events and ideas of the world, rueful, playful, warm voiced, easy to love (Annie Proulx, author of Brokeback Mountain )
Funny but serious, accessible but rich in meaning, consistently surprising – the world looks slightly different after reading a Billy Collins poem. He’s a one-off, an American treasure (Nick Laird, author of Up Late )
Collins remains the most companionable of poetic companions
The treat of treats. Unlike the wedding guest waylaid by Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, the reader emerges from encounters with Collins as a wiser and far happier person
'A writer . . . fully aware of his work’s power to delight
A poet of plenitude, irony, and Augustan grace
Delightfully direct, he won’t lose you in his lyricism but will transport you to a better place
Billy Collins 'puts the "fun" back in 'profundity' (Alice Fulton)
The most popular poet in America
Billy Collins writes lovely poems . . . Limpid, gently and consistently startling, more serious than they seem, they describe all the worlds that are and were and some others besides (John Updike)
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
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