I find I just love Billy Collins work! I have had little experience with contemporary poetry until a few years ago... I originally bought a copy of this book off the Remainder Shelf at a local Indie to give to a friend for her 90th birthday... As it happened, I read the entire volume on the plane as I was flying out to her party, at which point I utterly fell in love with this funny, vibrant and engaging poet. Now I own several this one and several other of his books and welcome every opportunity to read some more! 
 My father, his own father a poet, is one of those older Americans that can recite poetry he learned in Grade School - back when poetry mattered in the American landscape of education - Frost, Whitman, the Greek poets, the many Japanese Haiku poets and so many others whose names I can't recall but whose work I've heard recited many times over the decades. But I grew up and generally became bored with poetry, although the beauty of Haiku was probably the only version of poetry that was not lost to me throughout my life... the simple form of this lovely work always amazes me. 
 But I must thank Mr. Collins for bringing me back to the land of expressing wonderful or powerful or emotional things through poetry... something I enjoyed at various points in my life, particularly in my childhood, but never really got into as an adult - until now!