the cover of Billy Collins book "The Trouble with Poetry"Tales for All Tastes

By Nick Petrulakis


I did not want to enjoy Billy Collins’ latest collection, The Trouble with Poetry. He’s too successful, too commercial—he must be writing poems with all the grace of a Hallmark card. But then I realized I was one of them, “them” being anyone who pronounces judgment on a book, a movie or the latest sushi place without ever having read the book, seen the movie or eaten the sushi. So I read The Trouble with Poetry, and, yes, indeed, I was wrong.

Collins’ poems are accessible without being simple, playful without being jokey. Too often, poets traffic in the obscure, placing pylons in the roadway in order to make poetry difficult to navigate. Poetry doesn’t have to be difficult, and Collins shows that spare can mean elegant, that words can be clear and still be profound. Besides, any poet who is self-aware enough to write “the trouble with poetry is/that it encourages the writing of more poetry,” deserves to sell books. Lots of books.

The Trouble with Poetry by Billy Collins (Random House, 2005, 88 pp. $22.95)

HEROIC QUEST



When the Library Lights Go Out is a picture book with that rare combination of a wonderful story coupled with gorgeous illustrations. Bay Area writer Megan McDonald has penned an adventure inside the San Francisco Public Library.After closing time, Rabbit and Lion (two toys in the library’s puppet box) discover that Hermit Crab has gone missing, so they set out to find their friend. As they travel through the dark library, the ticking of a clock becomes a giant’s heartbeat, while a library table transforms into a bridge to that same giant’s lair.

Their quest, sure to delight children who revel in the power of their own imaginations, is marvelously illustrated by another Bay Area resident, Katherine Tillotson. When they find their friend, Hermit Crab exclaims,“There’s no better place for a picnic than San Francisco. Picnic Capital of the World!”When story and pictures come together in so charming a fashion, everyone will find something to enjoy in the journey.

When the Library Lights Go Out by Megan McDonald and Katherine Tillotson (Atheneum Books, 2005, 40 pp. $16.95)


LIFE AFTER DEATH?



Oakland’s own Mary Roach delighted (and disgusted) many readers with her first book, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. Stiff was one of those truly original books that’s like an accident on the side of Highway 101—you don’t want to look (cadavers? Egad!), you shouldn’t look—but look you do because Roach is so witty that the gruesome becomes beguiling.

In Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, Roach brings her insatiable scientific curiosity to that question of questions, what happens after we die? The journey on which she takes us is always engaging, traveling from India to Cambridge to San Francisco, with pit stops galore (her chapter on ectoplasm, “the physical manifestation of spirit energy,” is a hallmark of her laugh-out-loud style).The only drawback is that, alas, there are no answers. But with Spook, the journey is the destination, and if you want to explore opinions about the afterlife, this is great reading.

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach (W.W. Norton and Company, 2005, 311 pp. $24.95)