Billy Collins has 6 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 8 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.6★ across 23 ratings. The most-rated is Poetic License.
Poetic License
Summary
Why a poetry album? Easy answer: I love poetry. I love reading it. I love memorizing it. I love hearing great actors recite it. As the poet Mark Strand wrote, “Ink runs from the corners of my mouth / There is no happiness like mine / I have been eating poetry.” In the past, when I was full from eating, I have had the audacity to set poetry to music. But, on this audiobook, you will hear the music of the poems. Poetry unadorned. Words. Because in truth, great poetry needs nothing but a great actor, a voice as eloquent and expressive as the poem itself, to lift the poem off the page and into the heart. I have never done a project that has elicited so much enthusiasm. From the actors arriving at the studio who thanked me for inviting them to participate, "Are you kidding?" I’d say, "Thank you!" to the engineers who would say, "I never got this stuff, but these guys make it so beautiful." This audiobook has been a joy from beginning to end, a true labor of love. And whenever I heard my stomach rumbling during the production process, I always knew I could find something delicious to eat in the studio. Mmmm. Yeats? That hits the spot.
©2010 GPR Records - Spoken Word (P)2013 GPR Records - Spoken Word
Aimless Love
Summary
DIGITAL EXCLUSIVE: Includes five additional poems only available on the digital download. "Billy Collins puts the 'fun' back in 'profundity.' " --Alice Fulton From the two-term Poet Laureate of the United States Billy Collins comes his first compilation of new and selected poems in 12 years. Aimless Love combines new poems with selections from four previous books - Nine Horses, The Trouble with Poetry, Ballistics, and Horoscopes for the Dead. Collins's unmistakable voice, which brings together plain speech with imaginative surprise, is clearly heard with every word, reminding us how he has managed to enrich the tapestry of contemporary poetry and greatly expand its audience. His work is featured in top literary magazines such as The New Yorker, Poetry, and The Atlantic, and he sells out reading venues all across the country. Appearing regularly in The Best American Poetry series, his poems appeal to readers and live audiences far and wide and have been translated into more than a dozen languages. By turns playful, ironic, and serious, Collins's poetry captures the nuances of everyday life while leading the reader into zones of inspired wonder. In the poet's own words, he hopes that his poems "begin in Kansas and end in Oz." Touching on the themes of love, loss, joy, and poetry itself, these poems showcase the best work of this "poet of plenitude, irony, and Augustan grace" (The New Yorker).
©2013 Billy Collins (P)2013 Random House
Good Poems
Summary
Good Poems includes poems about lovers, children, failure, everyday life, death, and transcendence. It features the work of classic poets, such as Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Robert Frost, as well as the work of contemporary greats such as Howard Nemerov, Charles Bukowski, Donald Hall, Billy Collins, Robert Bly, and Sharon Olds. Good Poems includes poems about lovers, children, failure, everyday life, death, and transcendence. The poems are read by Keillor and a number of the poets included in the collection. Some are wise, some are funny, some are soothing or heartwarming. All were chosen for their wit, frankness, passion, and, in Keillor's words, their utter clarity in the face of everything else a person has to deal with at 7 a.m.
©2002 Garrison Keillor (P)2002 HighBridge Company
Billy Collins Live
Summary
In this exclusive audio publishing event, Billy Collins, former U.S. Poet Laureate, shares an evening of his poetry in a benefit reading for WNYC, New York Public Radio. Often compared to Robert Frost, his poetry has been embraced by people of all ages and backgrounds, and his readings are most often standing room only. Performed by the author at Peter Norton Symphony Space in New York City, Billy Collins reads 24 of his poems, including "Dharma", a spiritual yet humbling ode to man's best friend, "The Lanyard", an amusing recollection about the popular, if not pointless, summer camp pastime, and "Consolation", a tongue-in-cheek reflection of a cancelled European trip, and the benefits of staying home instead. In addition to the poetry readings, Collins also spends some time in a brief question and answer session where he reflects on what makes good poetry, his own process of reaching his audiences as a poet, the success of his Poetry 180 programs in schools nationwide, and an amusing sidebar on his memories growing up as an only child. At times pensive and sardonic, amusing and subtly sarcastic, Billy Collins Live celebrates both the simple and the complex in a language that appeals to all.
©2005 Billy Collins (P)2005 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.
Dueling Anthologists Billy Collins and Garrison Keillor at the 92nd Street Y
Summary
Billy Collins, former United States poet laureate, and Garrison Keillor, host of A Prairie Home Companion, return to the Y to read favorite poems from their new anthologies 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day (Mr. Collins) and Good Poems for Hard Times (Mr. Keillor).
©2005 92 nd Street Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association (P)2005 92 nd Street Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association
Whale Day
Summary
A new collection from Billy Collins, former US poet laureate and “America’s favorite poet” (The Wall Street Journal). Billy Collins’ new collection brings together more than 50 poems and showcases his deft mixing of the playful and the serious that has made him one of our country’s most celebrated and widely known 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, Whale Day builds on and amplifies Collins’ reputation as one of America’s most interesting and durable poets.
©2020 Billy Collins (P)2020 Random House Audio