Billy Collins’s poems tend to be perfectly clear, which sets him somewhat outside the mainstream of American poetry. His poems also tend to be entertaining, clever, and often highly amusing. The poet Alice Fulton has commented that “Billy Collins puts the ‘fun’ back in profundity.” But this poem shows a different aspect of his poetic skill. Collins was named U.S. Poet Laureate in 2001 and held that position until 2003. He was Poet Laureate for the State of New York from 2004 until 2006. “Tanager” is one of Collins’s recent poems and has not yet appeared in any of his collections, the most recent of which is Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems, published by Random House in 2013. “Tanager” originally appeared this past October in The New Yorker and is reprinted here with permission.
Billy Collins’s poems tend to be perfectly clear, which sets him somewhat outside the mainstream of American poetry. His poems also tend to be entertaining, clever, and often highly amusing. The poet Alice Fulton has commented that “Billy Collins puts the ‘fun’ back in profundity.” But this poem shows a different aspect of his poetic skill. Collins was named U.S. Poet Laureate in 2001 and held that position until 2003. He was Poet Laureate for the State of New York from 2004 until 2006. “Tanager” is one of Collins’s recent poems and has not yet appeared in any of his collections, the most recent of which is Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems, published by Random House in 2013. “Tanager” originally appeared this past October in The New Yorker and is reprinted here with permission.
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