Musical Tables: Poems

by Billy Collins

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the former United States Poet Laureate and New York Times bestselling author of Aimless Love, a collection of more than 125 small poems, all of them new, and each a thought or observation compressed to its emotional essence

“Whenever I pick up a new book of poems, I flip through the pages looking for small ones. Just as I might have trust in an abstract painter more if I knew he or she could draw a credible chicken, I have faith in poets who can go short.”—Billy Collins

You can spot a Billy Collins poem immediately. The amiable voice, the light touch, the sudden turn at the end. He "puts the ‘fun’  back in profundity,” says poet Alice Fulton. In his own words, his poems tend to “begin in Kansas and end in Oz.”

Now “America’s favorite poet” (The Wall Street Journal) has found a new form for his unique poetic the small poem. Here Collins writes about his trademark themes of nature, animals, poetry, mortality, absurdity, and love—all in a handful of lines. Neither haiku nor limerick, the small poem pushes to an extreme poetry’s famed power to condense emotional and conceptual meaning. Inspired by the small poetry of writers as diverse as William Carlos Williams, W.S. Merwin, Kay Ryan, and Charles Simic, and written with Collins’s recognizable wit and wisdom, the poems of Musical Tables show one of our greatest poets channeling his unique voice into a new phase of his exceptional career.

3:00 AM

Only my hand
is asleep,
but it’s a start.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Humor, Audiobook, Adult, Literature, American

143 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 15, 2022

About the author

William James Collins is an American poet who served as the Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He was a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York, retiring in 2016. Collins was recognized as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library (1992) and selected as the New York State Poet for 2004 through 2006. In 2016, Collins was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. As of 2020, he is a teacher in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton.

Reviews

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 2 out of 5]

I will always thank Billy Collins for being one of my introductions to modern poetry and how upon discovering him I was also getting into many of his other contemporaries like Charles Simic, Mary Oliver or W.S. Merwin and truly falling in love with poetry. Appointed US Poet Laureate from 2001-2003, Collins is a fun and rather accessible poet that can open people up to poetry when they are looking for a first foothold into it. I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for him, though after my initial excitement for him I did find him to be a bit too ‘old, white man humor’ and sort of cooled on needing to read him. Musical Tables, his 2022 release, is a rather unfortunate exercise in attempting short poetry, becoming more a collection of bad puns and ‘dad jokes’ that are more likely to make you cringe than cheer.

Take the poem Carbon Dating, for example, that says a man ‘tried it once’ but ‘the women / were a million years old.’ This is rather eye roll inducing (and reminds me that poems such as Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes were always a bit…uncool?). There are some moments that can be rather cute, but then fall apart, such as the poem ‘Aa’, the title written the way the letter A would appear on an alphabet list in elementary school when learning to write letters. He describes the letter pair as ‘capital and small, / parent and child’ and the image of them holding hands is rather adorable, but then the conclusion saying they are ‘about to cross / the street / in Alphabet City’ is almost too cutesy and kind of cheesy. There’s just nothing really to cling to here and not much beneath the surface beyond the wordplay that relies too heavily on cheesy jokes with each poem made entirely out of singular images that would likely work better folded into the context of a larger poem but feel sparse and silly on their own. For example, The Visit, which reads in it’s entirety:

‘The wind blew
open the front door

and sat down
in my father’s chair.’

feels akin to the more recent Charles Simic collections of condensed poems, though in Simic’s sparseness there is still a surreal quality that tends to pack the horrors of history and more inside while Collins tends to be wordplay without much beneath. There are some good ones still, like comparing falling asleep as ‘walking backwards / into a dark forest’ sweeping away ‘my footprints / of existence’ as he goes. Or View from a Bridge has an image I quite enjoy:

I never thought
of myself
as a little universe
inside a big one
until just now.

The trouble is there are only a small handful that work and register more as a relief than actual enjoyment when packed in with so many awkward ones. Honestly this whole collection feels like being embarrassed by your grandpa at dinner in public as he is too loudly making bad jokes. Because you get stuff like:

The Code of the West
Say what you want
About me,
But leave the horse
I rode in on out of it

And it’s just like OKAY, STOP IT, and then you flip the page and find a poem titled Henry Wadsworth Longfellow reads in its entirety ‘Trouble / was not / his middle name’ and you start yelling for the check and hoping to whatever god you choose that he isn’t going to pinch the waitress. He "puts the ‘fun’ back in profundity,” says Alice Fulton in the cover blurb, which is more of a poem than most of these because both ‘fun’ and ‘profundity’ are doing a lot of ironic heavy lifting.

Collins does have a fascination with short poems and even wrote a book about haikus, so I will congratulate him on trying something new that fits his interests. In the intro he references really enjoying the short poems by Simic, or Kay Ryan, and talks about how lovely the W.S. Merwin poem is that simply reads: ‘Elegy / Who would I show it to’. Honestly, the intro is the best part of the book and is a reminder that Collins actually does have great stuff to say and can say it well:

‘small poems are drastic examples of poetry’s way of squeezing large content into tight spaces. Unlike haiku, the small poem has no rules except to be small. Its length, or lack of it, is is only formal requirement.’

Its just unfortunate these do not work very well, especially since I, too, love the short poems the best. I think having picked the best 8-10 and making them a part of a collection with various styles and lengths would have worked significantly better because here it just feels like too much and not enough all at the same time.

It isn’t necessarily that he went for humor that is the problem, as many pull this off well (James Tate comes to mind for similar sort of similarly cornball but effective humor). I think the micro fiction of Lydia Davis is a good style to examine for this, as she uses humor but the work does not fully rely on the humor in order to be effective or stick. She also excels at packing so much that is implied, yet still vague, into a small space of words that compels you to toss and turn them in your mind and discover a deeper story and implications almost as a co-creater. I think short poems work best when they leave a big sting but also ache long after, having a reason to stick by you. These seem to aim at eliciting a laugh and, for the most part, are entirely forgotten by the time you turn the page.

If you are a big Collins fan, you might enjoy this and should still check it out. It wasn’t for me. I think there is a big push for poems that are small and compact though, especially as they are easy to share on social media and can make one point really effectively that sticks with you. I sometimes wish poets like Divya Victor who is winning lots of awards could get the publisher marketing benefits of a book like this. It just won’t be this book, but I am glad to see Collins is still working and still experimenting. Good for him. I’ll leave you with one I actually really did enjoy:

A Memory

It came back to me
Not in the way
A thing might be returned
To its rightful owner

But like dance music
Traveling in the dark
From one end
Of a lake to the other.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book of short poems. "Neither haiku nor limerick, the small poem pushes to an extreme poetry's famed power to condense emotional and conceptual meaning."

They are quite clever and to be savored rather than rushed, as there is usually another meaning to discover just beneath the surface. My favorites are: "The Naked Eye," "Limits," "Flash," and "Morning Walk."

Morning Walk

The dog stops often
to sniff the poems of others
before reciting her own.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was another library staff recommendation. I found myself attracted to the cover of a cow sitting on the sofa.

And questions began to form…

Who is this author? What will appeal to me, about reading his poetry?

His work, as described by him, is considered small poems, a way of including large content into tight spaces. Short messages that create an impactful reaction. A minimalist practice.

When the book came from my library…

I just began to read.

And strangely different poetry walked through my life, like…

The Visit
The wind blew
Open the front door
And sat down
In my father’s chair.

Three for a quarter
Just as you can tell the age of a tree
By the rings within it.
You can tell the vintage of a country song
By the coin required
To play a tune on the jukebox.

The poems are so short throughout, it took me less than an hour to read the entire book.

There is something satirical about his words. Real. Thoughtful. In many respects, I felt odd after I read each one.

What message was he trying to convey?

There is such truth in his words. A different way of looking at the world around us. Seeing everyone for who they truly are. A relationship with the world, with each other, formed in just a couple of sentences.

Is he asking us to question everything? Or see things as they truly are?

The author is a former U.S. Poet Laureate (2001-2003). He served as New York State Poet from 2004-2006, and in 2016 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

This isn’t his first work.

But…

It definitely is creative.

He dares us to look at the world creatively and with open eyes. See what we sometimes don’t notice. Be present in this moment. In this world.

Highway
Hitchhiking alone,
I notice an ant
Walking in the opposite direction.

What do we see in his words, but the world walking by us, and daring us to look.

Dogma
I might be an atheist
Were it not
For all the tall angels
And the pudgy cherubs
In the silvery clouds
Presiding over all those miracles.

Certainly not a traditionalist poet, but, definitely one that gives us opportunity to Pause. Reflect. Consider what is before us, and what is within us.

And…

Maybe just maybe bring a smile to our faces for some of the absurdity and simpleness of life. Definitely showcased in these pages.

Coincidence
Along Came Betty
And
In Walked Bud.

Lazy Creator
And on the second day
He rested.

Are you smiling, too?

[Lydia Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is filled with short poems. Even though its a fast read and loaded with short poems, I loved it. Its very thought provoking. I loved the title of the book and the cover. Its very thought provoking. I loved the title of the book and the cover. You read the poem and not understand what its talking about until you read it a few times, then the ah ha comes. Highly recommend.

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 5 out of 5]

Further proof that Billy Collins deserves every accolade he receives. His trademark humor interspersed with wisdom, all presented in tiny packages.

[Catherine Pratt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is filled with short poems. This book is an "Ah - Ha" book. You read the poem and not understand what its talking about until you read it like 3 times, then the ah ha comes. Even though its a fast read and loaded with short poems, I loved it. Its very thought provoking. Also I loved the title of the book and the cover . That little cow on the cover was so cute and I could not pass it off. Glad I didnt. Loved the book and hopefully I get to read more of his books.

I received a free copy of the book and is voluntary writing a review.

[Elizabeth☮ · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great homage to the “small poem” as Collins names these.

I smiled and sighed and displayed all manner of emotion while reading this collection.

“Oxymorons” includes Family Fun and Light Pollution

I have so many stand outs, but this is one of the best:

“A Memory”

It came back to me
not in the way
a thing might be retuned
to its rightful owner

but like dance music
traveling in the dark
from one end
of a lake to the other.

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would call these poems 'Colikus' - haiku like poems written by Billy Collins! Some are funny, some are insightful, some are profound: but all have the clear voice of a poet who has tremendous empathy for our collective human journey; a poet who is always able to find that spark of hope in the future.

[Katie Goodman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short poems and a short book. Some were cutesy, some more thoughtful but overall I loved it as a fun read! I ripped through this in a day and lol’d when I read this one:


Page-Turner

Desirable
in fiction.

Not so much
with a slim book of poems.

[Graeme · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Billy Collins, pure and simple. This is a small package of joy, certainly worthy of your attention.

[Elizabeth A · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a goal to read more poetry and I simply could not resist that cover.

I'd heard of Collins and his impressive resume - Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003 and the New York State Poet for 2004 through 2006 - but had yet to read any of his work.

This is a collection of 125 small poems. Instead of large landscapes think of that sparkle on a ripple in a pond. That's how these poems read to me. A reminder that each moment is an opportunity to have an experience.

[Carmen Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t read a lot of poetry, but I’m falling in love with Billy Collin’s. This one was great ☺️

[M · Rating 2 out of 5]

In my MFA program, it was unpopular to like Billy Collins, and I could understand why. My program was filled with people who wanted to write poetry that lasted longer than that odd taste on the tongue and though I would argue that some of Collins's poems are worthy of bringing into the classroom (which I do), I know many of his poems melt and are forgotten.

I will admit that there are poems by Collins that I love. I will admit that it makes sense he was chosen for Poet Laureate. He is an excellent non-poet's poet. He's easily understood and kind of affable on the page.

But--this collection is perhaps the best example of why my cohort did not love Collins.

I appreciated the note in the back of the book about short poems and the importance of them--I agree. There are so many short poems that zing and are delicious and worth that permanence. These poems usually *do something* though, whereas the poems in Collins's forthcoming book felt little more than the poetry equivalent of bad dad jokes.

I think if the brief poems were contrasted with some longer ones, there would have been more punch, but in a litany using a fairly similar technique each time, they felt un-unique and unsurprising to me.

A miss for me.

I received a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Susan Tunis · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a "not a poetry person," I have always enjoyed Mr. Collins' accessibility. So, I settled myself down, actually slowed my audiobook significantly (for me), and prepared to listen appreciatively.

And the thing is, these are basically the flash fiction of poetry. (He calls them "small poems.") They very clever, and often quite funny, but there's not much there there. There's nothing wrong with these slight verses, but after preparing myself for virtuous poetry reading, I couldn't help but feel let down. Recommended for fans of Ogden Nash.

[June · Rating 4 out of 5]

BILLY COLLINS
He apparently wrote a/
lot of poetry/
in various hotels/
and motels/
and musical tables.


MUSICAL TABLES
It sat among the others/
on the shelf of Emily’s Books,/
and waited./
I was baited by the patient cow/
behind the plastic cover sheaf/
and by the price: less than ten,/
minus a seasonal discount,/
plus Minnesotan tax./
I’ve paid more, with less return,/
for a box of bad bananas./
I peeled it from the stacks.

REVIEW
When I read some of these aloud/
because they were designed for that,/
my husband was patient for a while,/
but at last he said, If these are poems,/
I could be a poet, too.//

It’s harder than it looks, I told him./
There’s a reason this Billy sells so many books./
One of his tricks is how he makes it seem/
so easy to do.//

But in truth, I had already begun to scheme/
how to smuggle his comments/
into a stanza-ed review.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the idea of this book — short, whimsical, clever poems to dance around as you read. But the execution wasn’t there for me. I really enjoyed some of the poems, particularly those about nature or the act of writing, but a lot felt unfinished or had very sexist, patriarchal undertones, whether it was intentional or not.

[johnny ♡ · Rating 1 out of 5]

lol i hated these poems. ew.

[LAPL Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Billy Collins is a former U.S. Poet Laureate (2001 - 2003). Over the years he has become very well known for poems and for his poetry readings. "In 2002, as US poet laureate, Collins was asked to write a poem commemorating the first anniversary of the fall of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center on September 11. The reading was in front of a joint session of Congress held outside of Washington, DC," and “One of Billy Collins’ most critically acclaimed works, “Fishing on the Susquehanna in July” has been added to the preserved works of the United States Native American literary registry as being deemed a culturally significant poem.” In this collection of very short poems, he has had some fun as well as insight. These are not haikus, they are not limericks, and if you think these are easy to write, you have another challenge coming. Kind of like abstract art which might also look easy to do. Here is what Billy Collins has to say about the form: “Small poems are drastic examples of poetry’s way of squeezing large content into tight spaces. Unlike haiku, the small poem has no rules except to be small. Its length, or lack of it, is its only formal requirement.” His poems are pithy, humorous, and wise, and here is a selection that truly do not need any explication:



“Precocious”

When I repeated “There, there …”

my sobbing daughter

accused me

of quoting Gertrude Stein



“The Exception”

Whoever said

there’s a poem lurking in the darkness

of every pencil

was not thinking of this one.



“Page-Turner”

Desirable in fiction.

Not so much

with a slim book of poems.



“Jazz Man”

I’ve taken some lessons

and worked on

some nice voicings for the chords



but all I have to do

is raise the keyboard cover one inch

and the cat dashes from the room.


“Carpe Diem”

As the coffee was brewing,

I learned from a book

that the trunks of elephants

are sensitive enough

to pick up a coin

and powerful enough to smash

a tiger to the ground,

and that was more than

enough seizing the day for me.



And, maybe something for Earth Day:



“Limits”

Even on a calm day

if you remain quiet and hold your breath,



you still will not

be able to hear

the singing of the clouds.

Reviewed by Sheryn Morris, Librarian, Literature & Fiction

[Christopher Good · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eight out of ten.

Immediately approachable. Funny and sad by turns. The shortness of the poems does tend to limit their depth though. I read the entire collection in about an hour. With my level of self-indiscipline, it would have been hard not to.

[Punk · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Small poems," Collins writes, "are drastic examples of poetry's way of squeezing large content into tight spaces. Unlike haiku, the small poem has no rules except to be small."

But, unlike haiku, these small poems of his—some two lines, some closer to eight—don't linger in the mind. Some feel like punchlines to jokes that aren't very funny, and none are as memorable as the piece by A.R. Ammons that Collins makes the mistake of quoting in his afterword, which, in a moment of uncharacteristic anarchy, I read first:

Their Sex Life

One failure on
Top of another.

I've literally been thinking about that all month.

Others describe scenes that just don't do it. There's nothing to tease out. Nothing that stays with you. I say this as someone who normally adores Collins's work. I love his style, conversational, simple, absurd. His poetry is full of playful metaphors taken to ridiculous extremes in the service of joy or humor or grief. It makes me feel things, even if it's just the satisfaction of reading a really good poem. There are hints of that magic here, but the majority of this volume can be rushed through without anything making much of an impression.

Some are fun, yet oddly disposable:

The Code of the West

Say what you want
about me,
but leave the horse
I rode in on out of it.

That's good for a sensible chuckle, right? But are you going to come back to it? It might have been fun to jot down in your notebook as a passing thought, but it's got a very short shelf life as a poem.

The rhymes in this one make it a bit more memorable:

Motel Parking Lot

Saying goodbye is so sad,
I don't even bother

to turn around to see
what it was you just threw at me.

It also sets a scene and then runs off, making my mind wander as I wonder about the circumstances and the people involved and the setting. There's just enough here to inspire some thought.

But here's the one poem that truly sticks with me:

Twisting Time

I am twisting again
but not like I did last summer
or the summer before
or the summer before that.

I am twisting more slowly now
because it is cold
and I have grown heavy
and there is hardly any wind.

Now that is a poem. It starts off warm and lazy, like listening to the oldies station during summer vacation at the lake, and then it turns cold and heavy, building to that ominous final line that brings to mind the unavoidable spectre of lynching, and once you see that you can't stop thinking about it.

Unfortunately, this poem is an outlier, and nothing else from this volume is as powerful, or as memorable.

Three stars, rounded up from...not three stars.

[Ecem Yücel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the ARC of the book in exchange for an honest review.

"Musical Tables" is a book of small poems by Billy Collins. At the end of the book, Collins indicates that "small poems are drastic examples of poetry's way of squeezing large content into tight spaces", and he does that with every poem in this book, whether they are one-liners, or have several lines. Each poem depicts a different picture in a playful, humorous, and masterful way, triggering the whole imagination of its reader with only so many words. I have several favorite poems in this book but the one that keeps lingering is this:

"A Memory

It came back to me
not in the way
a thing might be returned
to its rightful owner
but like dance music
traveling in the dark
from one end
of a lake to the other."

Even in small poems, Billy Collins is amazing at preserving the strength and the emotion the words emit, which makes this book of poems a great reading experience, just like other poetry books of Collins.

[Melissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not sure what to make of this, honestly. Let me say that I'm a Billy Collins fan and have been one for many years. I enjoy his work and feel that he has helped make poetry accessible to those who may have felt intimidated. And I appreciate what he is doing in this new collection of what he calls "small poems."

Indeed, these are small -- or short -- poems. Some, if not most, are only a handful of words. They come across as more like fleeting thoughts, the kind you'd scribble down in a notebook to remember later. One liners.

3:00 AM

Only my hand
is asleep,
but it’s a start.

You expect to hear a "ba-DUM-bump" after each one. Most of these poems are witty, capable of eliciting a smile. Others fall flat, with some reviewers comparing them to "dad jokes" and others criticizing the environmental negligence of printing a book with only a few words per page. They're...not wrong.

This is a book I read in 25 minutes. I expected more from the experience, and I think that affected my impression of the book.

[Edgar Trevizo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Es muy difícil escribir pequeños poemas. Una ocurrencia, una chispa de ingenio, un chiste o un juego de palabras no hacen un poema. No son un poema. Collins es un tipo al que admiro y a quien disfruto enormemente releer, pero en este libro me parece que se equivoca con frecuencia y que ya está disfrutando de su enorme éxito y de que le van a publicar cualquier cosa que escriba. Cualquiera. Random House jamás le publicaría un libro así a un autor con menos nombre. Jamás. De hecho, pocas editoriales lo harían. Yo no lo haría en la mía.

[Jenn Mattson · Rating 5 out of 5]

First of all, that cover! I love it so! Then, love the title! I started reading a few of these a day when I first got it, but then had to just finish them all. I love the small poem concept - and I love small poems - but this collection wasn’t as much of a favorite as some of Billy’s other collections. However, I have a few major faves: “Morning Walk, “Summer,” “Saying,” “Angler,” “Reclining on Clouds,” and “The Exception “ are just a few I will be returning to many times.

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not a big reader of poetry (although as a former English teacher I suspect I read more of it than most readers and also read it more carefully). But I thoroughly enjoyed this collection. And maybe because they were all so short, allowing their cleverness to sparkle. Most of the poems play off their titles. Some of them deal with literary terms or especially reward a reader with a literate background. But best of all are the quirky insights into human behavior.

The book jacket notes say it best: “You can spot a Billy Collins poem immediately. The amiable voice, the light touch, the sudden turn at the end….Here Collins writes about his trademark themes of nature, animals, poetry, mortality, absurdity, and love — all in a handful of lines.”

Collins himself writes in his Afterword: “I loved the suddenness of small poems. They seemed to arrive and depart at the same time, disappearing in a wink…Small poems are drastic examples of poetry’s way of squeezing large content into tight spaces…The small poem is a flash, a gesture, a gambit without the game that follows. There’s no room for landscape here, or easeful reflection, but there is the opportunity for humor and poignancy.”

[Philip · Rating 1 out of 5]

Stardust
by Philip Habecker
...whenever I pick up a new book of poems, I flip through the pages, looking for small ones.

I could give you high marks
for being Billy Collins

Ten stars out of five

And I treasure the small poem
Breaking up an illuminating collection

Thou hast been faithful over a few things;
I will make thee ruler over many things.

But I've just eaten a Costco bag of Smarties,
Trying to savor the first pack or two,
But learning and relearning and relearning
The law of diminishing returns as I
unwrapped poem after poem after poem
and poured them down my mouth

[JuliaR · Rating 1 out of 5]

I absolutely cannot with this new age of short poems. When I saw this book recommended I was curious to give it a try, as the recommendation came from a book reviewer whose taste aligns with mine. Unfortunately, these poems were just disconnected phrases, they made very little sense to me. Is it that I needed some context to enjoy this?

Three poems called my attention and had more literary quality, but overall I’m left disappointed. Not for me.

[Eliott · Rating 2 out of 5]

Musical Tables
Overall Rating: ⭐ ⭐ (2/5)

I don't have a good system for poetry books, but I wasn't a fan of this one, so it gets 2 stars. Some funny moments, but mostly I was just bored and/or confused by each poem. :/

[Lynn Gambardella · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great poems! I had heard about his poem American Sonnet and read it and liked it. So wanted to read more poems by him. Just put another poetry book by Billy Collins on hold 😊

[Mara]

A collection of over 100 micro poems. Lots of humor, not quite as much depth as I was hoping for. (I will always compare his new work to "Picnic, Lightning.") My favorites in the collection, in order of appearance in the book:

Limits
Breaking Up
Thelonius Morning
Teenager
Divorce
Summer
Angler
The Student
Medieval Photography