Billy Collins's gift--a rare one--is taking the everyday and turning it like a prism, holding it up to the light to reveal its different facets. Aimless Love, a compilation of new and selected poems, is laced with Collins's signature whimsy and depth, exploring ordinary moments and touches on themes playful and profound.
The collection takes its title from a poem first published in Collins's 2002 book Nine Horses, one of four volumes excerpted here. The poem details his affection for "the miniature orange tree,/ the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,/ the highway that cuts across Florida." As Collins falls in love with the minutiae of the everyday again and again, readers will find their hearts, like his own, "propped up/ in a field on [a] tripod,/ ready for the next arrow."
Ranging from Florida to Paris, from a public bath in Istanbul to quiet country lanes, Collins travels through space and time, aiming only to notice and savor. He pokes sly fun at his own profession ("If This Were a Job I'd Be Fired") and muses on mortality ("Writing in the Afterlife," "Cemetery Ride"). But even when his poems begin in jest, they end in quiet, sincere grace. The final poem, "The Names," is so deeply moving that, as Collins says, "there is barely room on the walls of the heart."
By turns tender and mischievous, wryly humorous and contemplative, Aimless Love is Collins at his best. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams