A review by kfan
The Art of Drowning by Billy Collins

Really wanted to like this--I love the way he structures his poems, the rhythms of the lines. They have this easy lilt to them that's just about perfect. But I couldn't get into the actual content of the poems! I kept waiting for an ending, a line, a stanza that would come at my unexpectedly, knock me on my ear, but it never happened. I wanted to be surprised, I wanted to suddenly learn that the subject matter wasn't really the subject matter, but that was not the case here. For me the poems were almost pat, and I guess almost too light, in both senses of the word. I want poetry that looks at darkness and still finds hope, but here it was like we were pretending the darkness doesn't even exist.

(Looking forward to re-reading this in 10 years and discovering how totally wrong I was about this book.)