Billy Collins

I read a review quite a while ago that called Billy Collins accessible. I looked up his book, Sailing alone around the room, on Amazon.com and almost clicked on Purchase. But I'm too tight to buy a book of poems sight unseen. I copied down a poem by Robert Bly once that means a lot to me, but others by him that I have read just don't resonate with me. (You can read, "She doesn't understand them" there if you want to.) Even when I saw a copy of Nine Horses by Billy Collins in one of my catalogs for only $3.98, I hesitated. But I ordered it, and I'm so glad that I did. After I've read a few, it feels like every thing that happens to me in a day is a little poem that I ought to be able to write. But I can't, darn it. Vivid and mischievous, lonely and sad, friendly and funny--the poems make you feel not so alone in the world. Here is an example: "Ink strokes on rice paper--/a wooden bridge/curved over a river,/mountains in the distance, and in the foreground/a wind-blown tree. /I rotate the book on the table/so the tree/is leaning toward your village." Now, wasn't that fun?