ABSTRACT
Although Billy Collins is more widely read by general public than perhaps any other contemporary poet and despite his status as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003, he has not been enthusiastically received by many of his literary contemporaries. The lukewarm critical reception is also evident in review of Collins’ 2008 collection Ballistics in which the reviewer claims Collins has “hit a dead end” with the collection. Collins’ stylistic and thematic affinity with Ovid is most profoundly felt in both the preface poem and the final poem of Ballistics. To a careful reader of Ballistics, cows may even call to mind the quote from Ovid’s Metamorphoses that begins Collins’ collection: “Even as a cow she was lovely.” Collins’ poem Envoy, the final poem in his Ballistics collection, may be the most obviously Ovidian. A close examination of Collins’ affinity to Ovid reveals that Collins likewise has created a complex and polysemous text with his collection Ballistics.
