* Note: my complete review of this book can be found at http://blog.jjwylie.com/2011/05/horos... *

Every couple of years, when the Olympics start playing again on my television, I always have the same thought: "They make it look so easy!"

Whether I'm watching a gymnast tumbling & skipping through her floor routine or a ski-jumper executing some impossible freestyle stunt before sticking his landing, I actually entertain the thought, "That doesn't look so hard!"

Of course, on an intellectual level, I know I could never even attempt such feats, even were I to train for years. But the fluidity and grace these incredible athletes exhibit is like an optical illusion, masking the difficulties they endure & overcome in their pursuit of their discipline.

The poetry of Billy Collins is like this. It looks so easy. The language and tone he uses are simple & conversational. His images are similarly familiar & ordinary. Yet his poems contain riches that even the most opaque high-modernist could only aspire to. And, more often than not, Collins's poems are funny, too.

Take, for instance, the poem, "What She Said," from his new collection, Horoscopes for the Dead. Using the voice of a young woman on a failing date, Collins takes the most common of colloquialisms ("give me a break") and repeatedly whips the reader with it in a comic evocation of exasperation that makes head-shaking use of yet another colloquialism in its title.

But my personal favorite poem from Horoscopes for the Dead is "Drawing You From Memory," a poetic expansion of the notion that absence makes the heart grow fonder. It ends, of course, with a comedic reversal. To say more would deflate the joke.

Nowadays, poetry of the kind that Collins creates (constructions of words meant to be read by a reader and/or spoken by an unaccompanied voice) is a fringe art, unless, of course, you choose to include the words that are sung or rapped in today's popular music. (For the most part, I don't.) But if more poets could do what Collins does (i.e., create poetry that is both accessible, beautiful, and truly meaningful), then poetry might return to the center of contemporary culture. (Could you imagine an "American Idol" for aspiring poets?)

I wonder if I'll live long enough to see if it ever does. In the meantime, I'll console myself with Horoscopes for the Dead. You should, too.