Customer Reviews

Horoscopes for the Dead: Poems

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Billy Collins has become such a poetic institution -- widely regarded as the most popular poet working today and known for his accessibility, as well as the enjoyability & lightness of his verse -- that it can be sometimes it be easy to forget that Billy Collins is a human being, a poet who is still exploring, experimenting and engaging.

In "Horoscopes for the Dead," these two Billy Collins -- the beloved poetic institution and still evolving writer -- are somersaulting all over each other.

For fans of iconic Billy Collins work, there is a lot to love in this collection. There are beautiful and clever pieces about house guests, beloved dogs, walks in the woods, poetry workshops and poetry readings, dinner parties, dinner guests and sometimes just dinners. You get the sense, as you may have in previous collections, that Collins is conspiring with you in some wonderful morning kitchen, and that you just happen to be the lucky recipient of his well-turned phrases and well-timed thoughts.

And yet, there are poems in here that are likely to surprise.

In this collection -- even more so than his last, "Ballistics" -- Collins seems fixated on the darker elements of life. While "Ballistics" explored the shadows of heartbreak, "Horoscopes for the Dead" seems to intent on meeting mortality in its eyes. In pieces like the book's first poem, "Grave" -- in which finds Collins laying down on the graves of his parents, hoping to communicate with them in some way -- to the book's title poem -- where the absurdity of horoscopes is juxtaposed with a longing for passed friends -- Collins seems to find himself musing about death in a variety of ways. Even the death of marriage, which he describes as a "the department of lost husbands / or sometimes, as now, the department of dark and pouring rain."

But this collection also finds Collins lost in lust, snapping with stubbornness, itchy with frustration, and there is even a poem recalling his first acid trip -- all things that perhaps aren't associated with iconic Collins poetry. But to me, that's a good thing, a healthy sign for any poet that he can still delight and surprise, that he isn't letting his poetry be dictated by what his audience might want, but instead by what he wants to share, the darkness and the light.

I am happy to add "Horoscopes for the Dead" to my collection of Collins books, and selfishly & eagerly await his next one as well.

I have read most of Collins other poetry books and do really like his poetry. This book however is just plain dull. The cover is great. Too bad the poems inside don't match it. There are a lot of observation poems -- I saw ______________ and it reminds me of _________. Just not fun to read. A few of them are okay, but none of the poems are as good as in his previous books. If you really want to read this see if you can get it from your library first to make sure you really do want to read it. This is not his finest work.

Billy Collins' latest collection of poems does not disappoint. Collins makes poetry of ordinary things and writes with an ear to the reader. He blends many emotions and often adds a sense of wry humor. He is my favorite modern poet and I treasure his books. This is a review of a book purchased from Amazon.

Horoscopes for the Dead is the fourth collection of poems by Billy Collins that I've read. I'm slowly collecting copies of his other collections as I come across them and as I am able to afford them. Given this, I don't want to come across as a pseudo Collins expert. I am, in fact, merely someone who enjoys poetry that makes sense and speaks to me at some level, and that is Billy Collins from top to bottom.

I've come to see that Collins can create verse relating to virtually any topic, the mark, I am told of a very creative mind. In this collection we find poems about a ride though a cemetery (Cemetery Ride, pg. 77) in which the poet wonders about the names on the stones. In Horoscopes for the Dead, the title poem, Collins relates elements of horoscopes for a person now dead; a bit creepy to me but loud and clear that life goes on after our passing. In Two Creatures, pg. 53, we see what happens when dog and owner ponder each other. Other poems that are worth mentioning include: Thank-you Notes, pg. 79; The Meatball Department, pg. 89; The Hangover, pg. 59; Her, pg. 34, and finally The New Globe, pg. 39. Mentioning these should not leave anyone with the impress that the remaining works aren't worth mentioning. Nothing could be farther from the truth. All these works are great. These mentioned poems simply spoke to me on some personal level.

To be sure, there is cynicism in Horoscopes for the Dead. But there is also wonder. This is a worthy collection. Certainly, worth your time to read, ponder, and wonder about.

I highly recommend.

Peace to all.

I enjoy poetry, but I can't always explain why. When I read poetry, I do it for enjoyment and not as any type of scholarly exercise. So why do I feel guilty, sometimes, for liking Billy Collins so much? I guess because when I read it, I don't think to myself, oh now I'm going to try to dissect this obscure poem and wring some meaning from it. Instead, I just enjoy what I'm reading. They say the sign of true genius is making the difficult look easy. I don't think there is any English language poet doing that better than Collins. His wit is sharp, he observations are seemingly simple, but when I really analyze what he is doing and realize how wonderful his word choices are, I really see a sort of genius there.

This book of poetry, Horoscopes for the Dead, is no different. Billy treats us to his dark humor, his light humor, his humor humor, and his wonderful ability to put concise words to paper, one after another the absolute best he can. And the result is a treat. Buy this book! Buy all his books.

Billy Collins has said that the romantic poets killed off humor and replaced sex with landscapes. He also maintains that much poetry is about death and that we should read it for pleasure rather than analyzing it to death. (I believe that is a close paraphrase of what I heard him say about the poetry of Emily Dickinson in a recent radio interview.) He states, furthermore, that a poet should neither show all his cards nor place them all face down. This most popular of contemporary poets (United States Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003) certainly practices what he preaches. Although many of the poems in his latest collection HOROSCOPES FOR THE DEAD deal with death, he doesn't forget to amuse us, throw in an erotic poem or two and make his poems accessible.

The poem "Feedback" will make your smile: "The woman who wrote from Phoenix/after my reading there/to tell me they were all still talking about it/just wrote again/to tell me that they had stopped."

The award for the erotic (with humor) goes to "Genesis" where the narrator wonders how it would have been if Eve had been created before Adam and considers
What life would be like as one of your ribs--
To be with you all the time,
riding under your blouse and skin,
caged with the soft weight of yours breasts. . .

Mr. Collins often writes about dogs. I particularly like "Two Creatures." I submit it to the critics who find his poems not deep enough.

And because her [his dog's] eyes always follow me,
She must wonder, too, why

I shift from place to place,
From the couch to the sink
Or the pencil sharpener on the wall--

Two creatures bound by wonderment
Though unlike her, I have never once worried
After letting her out the back door

That she would take off in the car
And leave me to die
Behind the solid locked doors of this house.

Finally of the many poems on the subject of death "Grave" is hauntingly beautiful. The narrator visits the graves of his mother and father and asks them what they think of his new glasses. His mother says they make him "look very scholarly" but his father remains silent:

But he would say nothing,
And I could not find a silence

Among the 100 Chinese silences
That would fit the one that he created
Even though I was the one

Who had just made up the business
Of the 100 Chinese silences--
The Silence of the Night Boat

And the Silence of the Lotus,
Cousin to the Silence of the Temple Bell
Only deeper and softer, like petals, at its farthest edges.

Mr. Collins, with I suspect a twinkle in his eye, says he is grateful to "George Green, who assigned most of these poems a passing grade." I would give them all an "A."

Billy Collins strikes few false notes. I recently heard him say that only poets buy poetry. This book, like any of his collections, should change that,

When my copy of Billy Collins's latest book of poems, Horoscopes for the Dead, arrived in its plain brown Amazon jacket,
I treated it with awe and anticipation. This gifted man, this revealer of all things mortal, will take me on another journey into his surreal, achingly sad, wonderfully funny world of modern poetry. But first, I was mesmerized by the cover: a propeller floatplane (?) that is facing the viewer even as it skims some thick and lovely clouds. And above the plane, horoscopes for the dead, the title of the book. I pondered this image for a good long time: one would rarely encounter a head-on view of such a plane at this altitude. And since I can recognize that the plane is moving, I am puzzled by
its silence, it singular sense of purpose and isolation.

It was with such intimations that I ventured into Mr. Collins's latest book of poems. Let me just say, along with other reviewers on this site, that I am an admirer of Billy Collins, and this mesmerizing volume deserves its place alongside
my deep and crowded bookshelf of poetry volumes. I am struck by the way that he gets the words just so: "...a
roadside, grateful for the sweet weeds/and the mouthfuls of colorful wildflowers." And when he ventures into that all-so
familiar world of surreal imagination in "Palermo," to write about a squirrel that "begain to sing in a beautiful voice/
a melancholy aria about life and death," it means that I have not observed squirrels with any kind of passionate acceptance.

So, as I spend my silent mornings, reading one or two of these poems, I hope that they will teach me some of the pleasures of to be had by pasting the poem against one's heart, the way Collins does in "Memorizing "The Sun Rising' by
John Donne"" ...after hours stepping up and down the poem/testing the plan of every line/it goes with me now, contracted into a little spot within."

As the Poet Laureate from 2001 - 2003, Billy Collins has made his mark in contemporary poetry. The man has comprised audio poetry on compact discs, which became a best seller in 1997 and has earned countless awards and honors for his gift of writing. When I first read Billy Collins, I was struck by his comedic style; however, his playful tone intertwines a sense of seriousness, which forms his work into an ironic gem filled with sincerity and a place for his readers to find solace.

Last summer, I immersed myself into Billy Collins' new book. His newest edition, Horoscopes for the Dead: Poems, helped me with my own poetry. In my walk through his poems, I touched the sharpness of his craft. Collins invites us into a haunting world where he meditates on the memories of his parents in "Grave" and struggles with age in "The Snag." One can only feel the amalgamation of emotions all beautifully equalized like the spicy sweetness of ginger. In other words, this book is a must read without question.

A Billy Collins poem is very clearly a Billy Collins poem. The characters in a Billy Collins poem live regular lives and say regular things and eat regular food and do regular things. But there is always a twist, a what-if, a if-only. Beautiful little poems that can be read and enjoyed by old people or very young people. A little sadness, a little laughter.