July 2001: BILLY COLLINS NAMED U.S. POET LAUREATE read the press release December 1999: New York Times article On Literary Bridge, Poet Hits a Roadblock By Bruce Weber, The New York Times, 12/19/99 "At the podium in a makeshift lecture hall in Brooklyn College recently, Billy Collins was not exactly a commanding figure...it was hard to imagine him holding the attention of the 150 high school students, squirming a bit as they waited to hear him read his poems. But that is what happened. Reading in a void that leavens gravitas with a bit of mischief -- about a barking dog and Beethoven or how and why the three blind mice became blind -- Mr. Collins had the students in his thrall for nearly an hour... It can be argued that with his books selling briskly and his readings packing them in, Mr. Collins is the most popular poet in America. And now this very popularity has provoked one of the odder publishing battles of recent memory, pitting a huge commercial publisher against a small academic press over a literary poet. It is an argument about money, with a distinct David-and-Goliath plot, but it is also about publishing ethics and the right of an author to determine the direction of his career." Reviews What the experts have to say. Comments From the famous and almost famous. News: What's happening in the press. Link Library Another good source of hot stuff (on other sites). REVIEWS 1 The New York Times: With Humor, Poet Lures Fans to the Serious; (9/97) 2 The Bloomsbury Review The Art of Drowning, Billy Collins; (9-10/97) See the Link Library for more reviews. NEWS 2001 BILLY COLLINS NAMED U.S. POET LAUREATE read the press release 1999 Article: The New York Times: "On Literary Bridge, Poet Hits a Roadblock"; (12/19/99). excerpt.; full article Interview: Magma 14 "Billy Collins: a blue jean kind of style" 1997 POSMAN BOOKS in NYC Top 10 Poetry Books of 1997 1) The Art of Drowning, Billy Collins 2) View with a Grain of Sand, Wislawa Szymborska 3) Breathturn, Paul Celan 4) Plainwater, Anne Carson 5) The Errancy, Jorie Graham 6) Inventions of the March Hare, T.S. Eliot 7) The Spirit Level, Seamus Heaney 8) Poems of Akhmatova, translator Stanley Kunitz 9) The Bounty, Derek Walcott 10) New & Selected Poems, Thomas Lux 1995 Interview: The Boston Book Review "On Reading and Enjoying Billy Collins" © 1997 Big Snap © 1997 a small good production