What a wonderful book of poetry! I have only read a couple of Billy
Collins books of Poetry prior to this one. That said, this one does not
let you down at all. Each one is easy to read and tells a good story. They
seem to mature as he does. I've always thought Billy Collins' books would
make a great gift for friends or family.

Thank you so much, Billy Collins, Random House Publishing Group - Random House,
and NetGalley, for the chance to read and review this wonderful book of Poetry!

This collection of poems by Billy Collins seems a bit more introspective than his others, more focused on aging and the death of friends.

I like Billy Collins and his ability to use humor and playful language to delve into serious topics. This definitely felt like a long meditation on death, but again, with his signature charm and slight absurdity. I wish I could have given 3.5 stars because I did enjoy it, but nothing stuck with me or struck me. I saved no quotes or notes, and so I went with 3 stars. If you're a Billy Collins fan then it's definitely worth a read!

In his latest collection, Billy Collins's trademark wit and humor are in evidence, but he is more focused on his and others' mortality than usual. Billy Collins is always a delight to read and that holds true here, too. His voice is always welcome.

I came into this collection as someone not familiar with Billy Collins' poetry, and perhaps that's why I enjoyed it more than some of his fans who've reviewed it on Goodreads. I read it after reading far too many "Instagram poets" lately and was delighted by this collection after those.

Some of the poems are odd and whimsical, others more serious. Aging, mortality and death are frequent topics as Collins is not only losing loved ones but also facing his own end of life. There's also a lot of playfulness though, and I enjoyed his unique perspective.

Sample excerpt:

From "She's Gone":

leaving me here alone again,
feeling this time
like one of those pairs of drawings
featured in the colorful puzzle section
of the Sunday paper,
where you have to detect
the barely detectable differences between the two.

I read a digital ARC of this book for review.

...for death is the magnetic north of poetry




Whale Day and Other Poems by Billy Collins is the poet laureate's latest collection of poetry. Collins is an American poet, appointed as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He is a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York. Collins was recognized as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library and selected as the New York State Poet for 2004 through 2006. In 2016, Collins was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. As of 2020, he is a teacher in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton.

Collins has proven himself to be a brilliant poet. Even more so, in his style of writing. Collins is entertaining, witty, and his poetry relates to most people. However, he can not rhyme and has played on that in the past with the collection The Rain in Portugal. In this collection, I was astonished to find a near rhyme in "Sleeping on My Side." He writes as the reader is an old friend, and he is having a friendly conversation. It is an uncomplicated style, yet the reader can easily recognize the writing as poetry. 

Early on in this collection, a theme arises that is hard to miss -- Death and aging. From the poet's seventy-five-year-old dog to musing on his own mortality, the theme runs through the entire collection. Still, Collins adds his wit to keep the poetry from becoming depressing or, as in "Anniversary," offers a way to accept and even celebrate the end.  

The collection is not entirely on the above-mentioned theme. "Banana School" shows humor and a look at what we can learn from other species as well as making a crack about Gertrude Stein. In another poem, Collins leaves his wilder days behind by sailing into the quiet cardigan harbor of his life. In the months of the year, April is relieved to find she is not the cruelest month after all. Meanwhile, in Toronto, graduate students are busy translating his poems into Canadian.

Humorous at times, reflective at other times, and even sad at other times, Collins shows that America still has poets that can be in touch with the times and yet remain faithful to the concept of poetry. His writing is highly polished and remarkably colloquial. He can make the reader smile in one poem and tug at his or her heartstrings in another. Collins is truly unique and an American treasure. An outstanding poetry collection for all readers.


Available September 29, 2020

I haven’t read Billy Collins in years so I was excited about the opportunity to review this. This poetry collection mostly centers around aging and death, in a humorous and honest way.

I can’t personally relate to most poems as a young woman, but I did find myself marking many to read again in the future:

The Function of Poetry
Sleeping on My Side
Arizona
The Emperor of Ice Cubes
Dublin
Cremation
The Yellow Wood
Architecture at 3:30 A.M.
Me First

Me First really stood out to me and was my favorite of the collection.

These seem true to Billy Collins’ style. While I did find myself skipping several poems halfway through, it’s still an enjoyable read for poetry fans and fans of his work, so I would recommend it.

Whale Day is yet another beautiful collection from Billy Collins, assembled with examples of the way this poet notices and captures human life in verse. This enviable talent leads the read through meditations on mortality, humorous anecdotes about the practices we encounter in everyday life, and much more.

Choosing a side to sleep on, taking the dog for a walk, eating a piece of fruit — all of these human moments are wrapped in language like gifts and offered to remind us of the many elements we all have in common.

This is why Billy Collins remains one of my favorite poets, and I will take joy in rereading his words for some time.

Life Expectancy

There are poems here to like, but not as many as I had hoped or expected.

I admire and appreciate Collins, but I felt like a fair weather poetry friend as I read the first few poems in this collection. They did nothing for me and spoke not at all; I began to wonder if those people who seem to so unaccountably but adamantly not like Collins might be on to something. Well, then, Collins hit his poet stride and I hit my reader stride and we cruised right along to the end of this collection and I realized that, well, everything is still O.K., if maybe not exactly great.

And by the way, we're all getting older, and there's more death in this book than usual, but I guess that's to be expected, and anyway, Collins is still pretty good about death, so there's that.

(Please note that I received a free advance ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

Whale Day is the latest collection of poems by Billy Collins and it is wonderful. Collins is a great poet for people who might be intimidated by the idea of poetry. Not only are his poems beautiful and use language so well, they are so clear and relatable. There are layers upon layers of meaning as the reader digs into his poetry. His images are from the ordinary and yet are put together in such a wonderful way. I could read Collins poetry all day long!

I am partial to Billy Collins poetry. I enjoy his poems, especially for the twists and the simple but lyrical language.

The function of poetry
Something I try to remember by going to poetryfoundation.org and catching atleast one poem a day.
poems on dogs
dog poem

Paris in May
How would it be different, if the title were May in Paris.
"I found a link between my notebook
and the soft Parisian sky,
both being almost the same pale shade of blue"
How poetic to say my notebook is the color of the sky or vice-a-versa. Taking it to the next level of aesthetic instead of just observing by making the sky your notebook to get lost in or the sky a notebook that you can handle, that you can put under your arm like the knowledge becomes your own once you can condense the world in your notebook. You can take this as building up into the abstraction of something bigger and then coming back down the same way or the other to reality and see it for what it is, the meaning we give to the whole thing or being ok with not finding the exact mapping but have gone through the trial of explanation.

And its Raining Outside, Which always Adds
"as if the radio had a memory and a melancholy disposition"
In this poem it is "April in Paris"...

Life Expectancy
When your life cycles dont match, one is always outliving the other.

Sleeping on My Side
Funny take on back facing east or west. Its always the side that hurts less that wins.

Fainting goats

Imperial Message in "Imperial Garden"

Nice poetry prompt to "compose a message for the fortune cookie you were soon to receive". You will want to know how this poem ends.

I knew who Billy Collins was before receiving this most welcome e galley.  As many are aware, he was an American poet laureate.  As this year I am trying to read more poetry, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to savor the works in this collection.


What strikes me about the poet and his poems is how accessible and relatable they are and he is.  There were so many times when reading this volume that I found myself nodding my head and wanting to share lines with others.  Many of the poems relate day to day universal experiences.  Throughout, the poet's sensibility, sensitivity and humor are present.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this title in exchange for an honest review.  It is a special book.

Billy Collins is a master. This collection features poems that show off his subtle sense of humor, his impeccable eye for meaningful detail, and his gift for collecting moments that showcase a gentle and forgiving view of humanity.

I have never been disappointed in Billy Collins. Each new collection brings something new and special to his body of work. He's able to find, and express, new things in new ways and continues to surprise with his wisdom and well as his wit. Whale Day was no exception - Excellent!

I received a digital advance copy of "Whale Day," from Net Galley in exchange for a fair review. I am a fan of Billy Collins. I love how democratic his poems are and am genuinely happy that he expands the audience for poetry. A good Collins poem typically has an amusing or insightful first line, a well-developed middle section and a closing line that ties the poem's theme together that is relatable to most readers. He has a good sense of humor and in his pursuit of poetry that can be understood by the average reader, he more often than not avoids mawkish or treacly language. In this book of poems, the humor is less evident and is more focused on the end of life (not that it's necessarily immediate in the author) and the body's slow decline. Unfortunately, the writing is less sharp and some poems start with a premise that gets expanded on but there is no sharp ending to tie it all together. 'The Pregnant Man," a short poem, starts with the line "A man is pregnant," and suggests that he is capable and wants to "give birth" to something, anything, and then the last two lines end, "Look at him now playing cards/while the old waiter goes about his business." The last two lines are a deliberate misdirection that perhaps aborts a sense of something beautiful being born--an idea, a poem, etc.-- and collapses into the dullness or sameness of everyday life. But I think in this particular case, the poem just ends on discordant note.

Similarly, poems about particular paintings from Bonnard or Hopper don't encapsulate the particular painting in a vivid enough way so that Collins' lines can resonate with the reader. I stand in awe of poets who can verbally describe particular paintings so that the reader can attempt to see what the poet is "seeing" as he/she makes the imaginative leap into what feeling or point the poet is trying to articulate. Here is Collin's ending of "Evening Wind," by Edward Hopper-- "...I could envision the evening wind,/not just the wind as revealed by the curtains,/but the invisible wind itself blowing/through the room of this ingeniously titled drawing."

However, not all is lost. there is some mordant wit about cremation, ("you could end up in a coffee can/on a high shelf, widow glancing up--/ but not frequently enough--from an armchair."). I also enjoyed, "Listening to Hank Mobley Around 11 O'Clock After a Long Fun Boozy Dinner, the Four of Us, at Captain Pig's, Our Favorite Restaurant in Town," because of how he contrasts being 15 or 16 years old with where he is at now in life: "But having sailed some time ago/into the quiet cardigan harbor of my life/out of earshot of the siren songs/that lure men onto reefs of foolishness/."

Two poems deserve special recognition. "On the Death of Friends," wittingly plays off the cycle of death and sickness toward the end of life but there is not only imminent death but also "everything else that was (still) pouring/over the mighty floodgates of the senses." The poem, "The Symphony Orchestra of San Miguel de Allende," should make it into a Selected Poems edition of Billy Collins. It starts with above title as its first line and goes on to mention it is comprised of "church bells, roosters, doves and barking dogs," and pays respect to the rooster "...who crowed even before the time of/Christ," before plaintively but gorgeously concluding: "The dogs are barking to be fed./ The roosters are beckoning us to the henhouse/where three eggs are still warm in the straw./ But the doves are mourning our awful losses,/and the bells are there to remind us of God."

Out of respect to the wonderful poetry Billy Collins has given us over the decades, he deserves to have this review conclude on what is great about him.