The Art of Drowning

The Art of Drowning is a book of poetry by the American Poet Laureate Billy Collins, first published in 1995. John Updike described the collection as "Lovely poems--lovely in a way almost nobody's since Roethke's are. Limpid, gently and consistently startling, more serious than they seem, they describe all the worlds that are and were and some others besides." The title poem is the 11th poem in the collection, and it describes a man who reflects on the course of his life while he is drowning.