Picnic, Lightning (Pitt Poetry Series)
In these playful, conversational poems, Billy Collins immerses  us in the minutiae of a life--cow viewing, parsley chopping,  "buzzing around on espresso"--and restores a sense of wonder.  In a voice half confessional, half avuncular, he takes us by the hand  and shares his deepest secrets. Whether shoveling snow with the Buddha,  releasingEmily  Dickinsonfrom her corsets, spoofingAudenandWordsworth,  or putting words in the mouths of Victoria's Secret models ("So  what if I am wearing nothing / but this stretch panne velvet bodysuit ... Do you have a problem with that?!"), Collins is a pure  delight. In one of several poems in which jazz figures prominently, he  amusingly considers well-known but ne'er-acknowledged facial  expressions such as "the languorous droop," "pained  concentration," and "existential bemusement." Similarly,  in "Marginalia" he caps off a list of scribblings with a  pointed request for all to step forward who "have managed to  graduate from college / without ever having written 'Man vs. Nature'" in a margin.Though there is plenty to make us laugh, Collins is more than a mere  comic genius. On the contrary, he balances the ribald with the  poignant, the over-the-top with the serenely beautiful:And the soul is up on the roofin her nightdress, straddling the ridge,singing a song about the wildness of the seauntil the first rip of pink appears in the sky.Then, they all will return to the sleeping bodythe way a flock of birds settles back into a tree...In the opening poem ("A Portrait of the Reader with a Bowl of  Cereal"), Collins defiesWilliam  Butler Yeats's advice to "never speak directly, / as to  someone at the breakfast table." Instead, he promises to  "lean forward, / elbows on the table, / with something to tell  you." One hundred pages later, we thank him for a promise kept. --Martha Silano