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Whale Day: Book summary and reviews of Whale Day by Billy Collins

Whale Day

And Other Poems

by Billy Collins

Whale Day by Billy Collins X
Whale Day by Billy Collins
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  • Published Sep 2020
    144 pages
    Genre: Poetry & Novels in Verse

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Book Summary

A new collection from Billy Collins, former U.S. Poet Laureate and "America's favorite poet" (the Wall Street Journal).

Billy Collins's new collection brings together more than fifty poems and showcases his deft mixing of the playful and the serious that has made him one of our country's most celebrated and widely read poets. Here are poems that leap with whimsy and imagination, yet stay grounded in the familiar, common things of everyday experience. Collins takes us for a walk with an impossibly ancient dog, discovers the original way to eat a banana, meets an Irish spider, and even invites us to his own funeral. Sensitive to the wonders of being alive as well as the thrill of mortality, Whale Day builds on and amplifies Collins's reputation as one of America's most interesting and durable poets.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"The playful 13th collection from Collins is packed with his signature quirky humor and small epiphanies...Fans of the former poet laureate of the U.S. will be delighted with this latest, but those new to Collins's work may find the collection does not dig deeply enough into complex emotion or pain." - Publishers Weekly

This information about Whale Day was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Billy Collins

Billy Collins is the author of twelve prior collections of poetry including The Rain in Portugal, Aimless Love, Horoscopes for the Dead, Ballistics, The Trouble with Poetry, Nine Horses, Sailing Alone Around the Room, Questions About Angels, The Art of Drowning, and Picnic, Lightning. He is also the editor of Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry, 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day, and Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds. A former Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York, Collins served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003 and as New York State Poet from 2004 to 2006. In 2016 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Florida with his wife Suzannah.

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