Water, Water

Name: Water, Water
ISBN: 9780593731048

Billy Collins

2025·145 pages

Literary Fiction

“Witty, wry and tender when it hurts, Water, Water is a pleasure to read and easy to give.”
— The Washington Post

“Collins remains the most companionable of poetic companions.”
— The New York Times

“Among the best poems that [Billy] Collins has ever written.”
— Maureen Corrigan, NPR

From the former Poet Laureate of the United States and author of Aimless Love comes a wondrous new collection of poems focused on the joys and mysteries of daily life. In this collection of sixty new poems, Billy Collins writes about the beauties and ironies of everyday experience. A poem is best, he feels, when it begins in clarity but ends with a whiff of mystery. In Water, Water, Collins combines his vigilant attention and respect for the peripheral to create moments of delight. Common and uncommon events are captured here with equal fascination, be it a cat leaning to drink from a swimming pool, a nurse calling a name in a waiting room, or an astronaut reciting Emily Dickinson from outer space. With his trademark lyrical informality, Collins asks us to slow down and glimpse the elevated in the ordinary, the odd in the familiar. The Monet Conundrum Is every one of these poems different from the others he asked himself, as the rain quieted down, or are they all the same poem, haystack after haystack at different times of day, different shadows and shades of hay?

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