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On June 20 the news broke that Lehman College’s newly appointed Distinguished Professor of English Billy Collins, faculty member since 1969, will be the nation’s next Poet Laureate, succeeding Stanley Kunitz. Asked what his initial reaction was to joining the august ranks of American bards, Collins summoned up a characteristically bemusing image: “It came completely out of the blue, like a soft wrecking ball from outer space.”

Since his Questions About Angels appeared in 1991, Collins has published several volumes of poetry to increasing acclaim. His ninth collection, Sailing Alone Around the Room, has just appeared from Random House.

Collins officially assumes his Laureate duties—and his office in the Library of Congress—in October, when he delivers his inaugural reading. CUNY•Matters will report more fully on Collins’ Laureate year in a later issue. In the meantime, readers may wish to sample the wry smile of the Collins style in “Sonnet.” Here the poet offers a subversive take on the intricate Petrarchan/Shakespearean sonnet form that is a little more bumptious than Wordsworth’s genteel “Scorn Not the Sonnet.”