This is my favorite collection of poetry by Billy Collins (Poet Laureate from 2001-2003). This book of poems contains my two favorite poems by him "The Revenant" and "The Lanyard." Each poem is extremely funny. I have these on a CD with Billy Collins reading them and kids love it! In the poem "The Revenant," Mr. Collins said that he wanted to try to create an unsentimental poem about a dog and did so in this poem which begins be stating, "I am the dog you put to sleep" and continues with a hilarious laundry list of reasons the dog never really liked his owners in the first place (with memorable lines such as "you always scratched me in the wrong place" and "The jiggling of my tags drove me mad"). His poems are a great way to get students to realize that poetry is not just stuffy rhyming lines but amusing prose and poignant messages as well.
Julia, High School Teacher
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