{"product_id":"whale-day-isbn-9780399589775","title":"Whale Day","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003eA wondrous collection from Billy Collins, former U.S. Poet Laureate and \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Rain in Portugal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e“The poems are marked by his characteristic humor and arise out of small, banal moments, unearthing the extraordinary or uncanny in the everyday.”—\u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eWhale Day\u003c\/i\u003e brings together more than fifty poems and showcases the deft mixing of the playful and the serious that has made Billy Collins one of our country’s most celebrated and widely read poets. Here are poems that leap with whimsy and imagination, yet stay grounded in the familiar, common things of everyday experience. Collins takes us for a walk with an impossibly ancient dog, discovers the original way to eat a banana, meets an Irish spider, and even invites us to his own funeral. Sensitive to the wonders of being alive as well as the thrill of mortality, \u003ci\u003eWhale Day \u003c\/i\u003ebuilds on and amplifies Collins’s reputation as one of America’s most interesting and durable poets.\u003cb\u003eBilly Collins \u003c\/b\u003eis the author of twelve prior collections of poetry including \u003ci\u003eThe Rain in Portugal\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eAimless Love\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eHoroscopes for the Dead\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eBallistics\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Trouble with Poetry\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eNine Horses\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eSailing Alone Around the Room\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eQuestions About Angels\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Art of Drowning\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003ePicnic, Lightning\u003c\/i\u003e. He is also the editor of \u003ci\u003ePoetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003e180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eBright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds\u003c\/i\u003e. A former Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York, Collins served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003 and as New York State Poet from 2004 to 2006. In 2016 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Florida with his wife, Suzannah.\u003cb\u003eOne\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWalking My Seventy-Five-Year-Old Dog\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe’s painfully slow,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eso I often have to stop and wait\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewhile she examines some roadside weeds\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eas if she were reading the biography of a famous dog.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd she’s not a pretty sight anymore,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003edragging one of her hind legs,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eher coat too matted to brush or comb,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand a snout white as a marshmallow.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe usually walk down a disused road\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethat runs along the edge of a lake,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewhose surface trembles in a high wind\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand is slow to ice over as the months grow cold.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe don’t walk very far before\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eshe sits down on her worn haunches\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand looks up at me with her rheumy eyes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen it’s time to carry her back to the car.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJust thinking about the honesty in her eyes,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI realize I should tell you\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eshe’s not really seventy-five. She’s fourteen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI guess I was trying to appeal to your sense\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eof the bizarre, the curiosities of the sideshow.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI mean who really cares about another person’s dog?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEverything else I’ve said is true,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eexcept the part about her being fourteen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI mean she’s old, but not that old,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand it’s not polite to divulge the true age of a lady.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eContemporary Americans\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI was trying to make my way\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eacross a busy street in San Francisco,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewhile carrying the new anthology of poetry\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI’d been flipping through earlier that morning—\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewith my pot of tea and two pieces of cinnamon toast—\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ein which I was wedged between James Tate and Bob Dylan\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ebecause the poets were arranged old to young, according to age.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI had to avoid a couple of cars,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ecross over two sets of trolley tracks,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand dodge a guy with a ski cap on a bicycle\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ein order to get across the street and enter\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eone of the city’s many hospitable parks\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewith their hedges, benches, and shade trees\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand often girls on a blanket, a juggler, an old man doing tai-chi.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd that’s where I lay down on the soft grass,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eclosed my eyes, and after a little while\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ebegan to picture the three of us lined up in a row\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eaccording to the editor’s wishes,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003esliding out of our mothers in order, one after the other,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethen ending up pressed together on a shelf\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ein a corner bookstore, yodeling away in the dark.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eParis in May\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA teddy bear in a store window,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethree housepainters\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewaiting to cross a boulevard,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ea woman in a café, her red nails\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eon a man’s nape while she smokes—\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewhat are we to make of all this?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the church of Saint-Sulpice,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe Virgin holds her baby to her chest\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eas she stands on the round earth,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eappearing to be unaware\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eof the serpent she is crushing with one foot.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOutside, four stone lions guard a fountain.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIs this a puzzle I am meant to solve\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ebefore the evening bells ring again—\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ehere a man wearing a newspaper hat,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethere a child alone on a flowery balcony?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAn outdoor table on Rue Cassette\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eseemed a good enough place to sort things out.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd sure enough,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eafter two milky-green glasses of Pernod,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe crowd flowed around me like a breeze,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand I found a link between my notebook\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand the soft Parisian sky,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eboth being almost the same pale shade of blue.Two-term United States Poet Laureate","brand":"Random House Trade Paperbacks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303869206757,"sku":"NP9780399589775","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780399589775.jpg?v=1767743792","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/whale-day-isbn-9780399589775","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}