“I’ve grown old–
now my own name
rings a bell.”

In each of the short poems in Billy Collins’s Musical Tables, the former United States Poet Laureate tempers his characteristically jocular voice with what he calls the “thrill of mortality” – flashes of profundity amongst the mundane, startling reminders of the wonder of being alive.

Through the brevity of these poems, Collins’ knack for coaxing the poetry out of the everyday becomes ever more refined. Whether reflecting on mornings spent in the thicket of Los Angeles traffic, or turning over clichés on the tongue until old metaphors become new again, Musical Tables is Billy Collins at his most meditative: brief, and all the more brilliant for it.