Collins' 'Ballistics' hits mark

BALLISTICS. By Billy Collins. Random House. 112 pages. $24.

Billy Collins has built his reputation on deadpan humor in poems that make poetry writing look easy. You'd think that all he does is jot down his current thoughts on any given subject, then follow them wherever they might lead, which is exactly what he says that he does.

Yet in his best poems, he does much more. Always self-aware, somehow he manages to hit upon what is both funny and tinged with seriousness. For example, "Old Man Eating Alone in a Chinese Restaurant" is both wry and wise.

In "Ballistics," the poet continues his vein of poetry that holds one-sided, intimate conversations with the reader, revealing a bemused mind that revels in philosophizing and observing ordinary life on an ordinary day. Subjects that have been staples of his past eight books reappear in this one: childhood, place and travel, rival poets, writing, language and its ironies.

The persona of the poems is a loner — hiding, walking the city streets, talking to a French dog in English, writing at his desk. In some of the funniest poems, he breaks the rules, deliberately filling a poem with cliches, making up his own cliches or overusing the word "suddenly" until just the appearance of the word itself brings on laughter.

Although his poems are far from academic, with good effect Collins the scholar relishes allusions to poets such as Dante, Elizabeth Bishop and Wallace Stevens. But rarely does an appreciation of the poem hinge on the allusion.

Now that he is older, there is the added focus on aging and death. In the poem "On the Death of a Next-Door Neighbor," the poet wonders why death had come, apparently by mistake, to his younger neighbor rather than to him: "Was it poor directions, the blurring rain/or the too-small numerals on the mailbox/that sent his dark car up the wrong winding driveway?"

Collins isn't always successful with his wit, and this book isn't his best. Some of these poems fall flat. "Bathtub Families," about a package of toy animals, is inane. "Listening Baby" misses the chance to be a poem of consequence. "Oh, My God!" in its attempt as a brief commentary on that expression is more like notes for a poem than the poem itself. But any book by Collins is worth suffering the flat poems for the good ones. Better yet is the chance to hear him read, in that deadpan voice, when they all sound good.