Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins

Title: Sailing Alone Around the Room

Author: Billy Collins

# pages: 172

Date published: 2001

Genre: poetry

Challenge(s): Shelfari’s Play Book Tag’s November tag, 2008 A Novel Reading Challege's Mini-Challenge

Rating:

(good)

Random Thoughts: Sailing Alone Around the Room is a collection of poetry written by the Poet Laureate of the United States for 2001-2003. I have to tell you, I don’t read poetry—ever. Well, at least not since I was forced to in high school and college when I hated it with an absolute passion.

I belong to a group on Shelfari called Play Book Tag. One person in the group picks one of the top 200 tags that people label their books with each month. November’s tag was poetry. I was *not* thrilled ;o). But, I always try to read at least one book each month that fits the tag that was chosen. It’s my way of broadening my reading horizons.

And you know what? I didn’t hate Sailing Alone Around the Room. I didn’t love every poem in there, but I did like quite a few. Huh…who knew?

Here’s part of my favorite one. The title is Forgetfulness:

The name of the author is the first to go

followed obediently by the title, the plot,

the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel

which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never

even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor

decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,

to a little fishing village where there are no phones. (p. 29)

I could actually relate to this. How come we never read poem in high school and college that I could relate to? I doubt that I’ll start reading a lot of poetry, but at least now I realize it doesn’t all suck.

Recommended for readers who like: poetry, but even if you think you don’t like poetry you might want to give it another shot. It's not as tortuous as it used to be.