The Rain in Portugal: Poems

<b>From former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins comes a twelfth collection of poetry offering nearly fifty new poems that showcase the generosity, wit, and imaginative play that prompted <i>The Wall Street Journal</i> to call him &quot;America's favorite poet.&quot;</b><br> <br> <i>The Rain in Portugal</i> - a title that admits he's not much of a rhymer - sheds Collins's ironic light on such subjects as travel and art, cats and dogs, loneliness and love, beauty and death. His tones range from the whimsical - &quot;the dogs of Minneapolis . . . / have no idea they're in Minneapolis&quot; - to the elegiac in a reaction to the death of Seamus Heaney. A student of the everyday, here Collins contemplates a weather vane, a still life painting, the calendar, and a child lost at a beach. His imaginative fabrications have Shakespeare flying comfortably in first class and Keith Richards supporting the globe on his head. By turns entertaining, engaging, and enlightening, <i>The Rain in Portugal</i> amounts to another chorus of poems from one of the most respected and familiar voices in the world of American poetry.<br> <br> <b>On Rhyme</b><br> <b> </b><br> It's possible that a stitch in time<br> might save as many as twelve or as few as three,<br> and I have no trouble remembering<br> that September has thirty days.<br> So do June, November, and April.<br> <br> I like a cat wearing a chapeau or a trilby,<br> Little Jack Horner sitting on a sofa,<br> old men who are not from Nantucket,<br> and how life can seem almost unreal<br> when you are gently rowing a boat down a stream.<br> <br> That's why instead of recalling today <br> that it mostly pours in Spain, <br> I am going to picture the rain in Portugal,<br> how it falls on the hillside vineyards, <br> on the surface of the deep harbors<br> <br> where fishing boats are swaying, <br> and in the narrow alleys of the cities<br> where three boys in tee shirts <br> are kicking a soccer ball in the rain,<br> ignoring the window-cries of their mothers.