Sailing Alone Around the Room

Sailing Alone Around the Room, by America's Poet Laureate, Billy Collins, contains both new poems and a generous gathering from his earlier collections The Apple That Astonished Paris, Questions About Angels, The Art of Drowning, and Picnic, Lightning. These poems show Collins at his best, performing the kinds of distinctive poetic maneuvers that have delighted and fascinated so many readers. They may begin in curiosity and end in grief; they may start with irony and end with lyric transformation; they may, and often do, begin with the everyday and end in the infinite. Possessed of a unique voice that is at once plain and melodic, Billy Collins has managed to enrich American poetry while greatly widening the circle of its audience.

Billy Collins has published six collections of poetry, including Questions About Angels, The Art of Drowning, and Picnic, Lightning. He teaches at Lehman College of the City University of New York and at Sarah Lawrence College and was recently appointed named the U.S. Poet Laureate. From the Hardcover edition.

From The Apple That Astonished Paris (1988)
Another Reason Why I Don't Keep a Gun in the House	p. 3
Walking Across the Atlantic	p. 4
Plight of the Troubadour	p. 5
The Lesson	p. 6
Winter Syntax	p. 7
Advice to Writers	p. 8
The Rival Poet	p. 9
Insomnia	p. 10
Earthling	p. 11
Books	p. 12
Bar Time	p. 14
My Number	p. 15
Introduction to Poetry	p. 16
The Brooklyn Museum of Art	p. 17
Schoolsville	p. 18
From Questions About Angels (1991)
American Sonnet	p. 23
Questions About Angels	p. 24
A History of Weather	p. 26
The Death of Allegory	p. 27
Forgetfulness	p. 29
Candle Hat	p. 30
Student of Clouds	p. 32
The Dead	p. 33
The Man in the Moon	p. 34
The Wires of the Night	p. 35
Vade Mecum	p. 36
Not Touching	p. 37
The History Teacher	p. 38
First Reader	p. 39
Purity	p. 40
Nostalgia	p. 42
From The Art of Drowning (1995)
Consolation	p. 47
Osso Buco	p. 49
Directions	p. 51
Sunday Morning with the Sensational Nightingales	p. 53
The Best Cigarette	p. 55
Days	p. 57
Tuesday, June 4, 1991	p. 58
Canada	p. 61
On Turning Ten	p. 63
Workshop	p. 65
My Heart	p. 68
Budapest	p. 69
Dancing Toward Bethlehem	p. 70
Monday Morning	p. 71
Center	p. 72
Design	p. 73
Pinup	p. 74
Piano Lessons	p. 76
The Blues	p. 78
Man in Space	p. 79
Nightclub	p. 80
Some Final Words	p. 82
From Picnic, Lightning (1998)
Fishing on the Susquehanna in July	p. 87
To a Stranger Born in Some Distant Country Hundreds of Years from Now	p. 89
I Chop Some Parsley While Listening to Art Blakey's Version of "Three Blind Mice"	p. 90
Afternoon with Irish Cows	p. 92
Marginalia	p. 94
Some Days	p. 97
Picnic, Lightning	p. 98
Morning	p. 100
Bonsai	p. 101
Shoveling Snow with Buddha	p. 103
Snow	p. 105
Japan	p. 107
Victoria's Secret	p. 109
Lines Composed Over Three Thousand Miles from Tintern Abbey	p. 113
Paradelle for Susan	p. 116
Lines Lost Among Trees	p. 117
Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes	p. 119
The Night House	p. 121
Splitting Wood	p. 123
The Death of the Hat	p. 126
Passengers	p. 128
Where I Live	p. 130
Aristotle	p. 132
New Poems
Dharma	p. 137
Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty, I Pause to Admire the Length and Clarity of Their Titles	p. 138
Snow Day	p. 140
Insomnia	p. 142
Madmen	p. 144
Sonnet	p. 146
Idiomatic	p. 147
The Waitress	p. 148
The Butterfly Effect	p. 151
Serenade	p. 152
The Three Wishes	p. 154
Pavilion	p. 156
The Movies	p. 158
Jealousy	p. 160
Tomes	p. 162
Man Listening to Disc	p. 164
Scotland	p. 166
November	p. 168
The Iron Bridge	p. 169
The Flight of the Reader	p. 171
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Sailing Alone Around the Room

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials