The Rain in Portugal—a title that admits he’s not much of a rhymer—sheds Collins’s ironic light on such subjects as travel and art, cats and dogs, loneliness and love, beauty and death. His tones range from the whimsical—“the dogs of Minneapolis . . . / have no idea they’re in Minneapolis”—to the elegiac in a reaction to the death of Seamus Heaney. A student of the everyday, Collins here contemplates a weather vane, a still life painting, the calendar, and a child lost at a beach. His imaginative fabrications have Shakespeare flying comfortably in first class and Keith Richards supporting the globe on his head. By turns entertaining, engaging, and enlightening, The Rain in Portugal amounts to another chorus of poems from one of the most respected and familiar voices in the world of American poetry.
Poetrya.morgan@carriersignal.com2023-04-30T14:22:02-04:00
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Jericho Brown on "The Tradition" | 2019 National Book Festival
Morgan Parker on "Magical Negro" at the 2019 AWP Book Fair
Ada Limon on "The Carrying" at the 2019 AWP Book Fair
Keith S. Wilson on Fieldnotes on "Ordinary Love" at the 2019 AWP Book Fair
Kevin Young on "Brown" at the 2018 Miami Book Fair
Billy Collins and Juan Felipe Herrera on "The Rain in Portugal" at the 2018 Miami Book Fair
Tracy K. Smith on "Wade in the Water: Poems" at the 2018 National Book Festival
Mary Jo Bang and Christopher Merrill talk poetry at the 2018 L.A. Times Festival of Books
Robin Coste Lewis and Evie Shockley at the 2018 L.A. Times Festival of Books
Ada Limon reads "The Vulture and the Body" at the 2018 AWP Book Fair
Adrian Matejka reads "Emily Dickinson ft Basketball and EPMD" at the 2018 AWP Book Fair
Danez Smith reads "Everyday is a Funeral & a Miracle" at AMP 2018
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