I Wish I Was Billy Collins: Poems by Pete McLaughlin

(Hardback)

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Part standup comedy, part painfully revealing self-exploration, this is a tender, heartbreaking, hilarious book of poems about the male condition in the 21st Century.

These are poems to read and reread and then to read aloud to friends. Even nonplussed strangers will smile knowingly after being ushered into Pete McLaughlins world, laughing at his manic, self-deprecating take on the grim horror of waking up to find yourself a divorced middle-aged dude living by yourself with a cat, one given to fits of projectile vomiting.

The poems range from a riff on the yearning of an Angry Prius who just wants to get out in the fast lane, one time, and drive all-out mercilessly tailgating all comers,/ even senior citizens, to the revelations of Middle Age, about being picked up by a woman in her sixties who plays teasing, exploratory footsie beneath the tablecloth/her unblinking green-light eyes/locked mercilessly onto mine/she winks knowingly, her big toe somehow in my pocket now.

Reviews

"An amazing poet" -Billy Collins

"I love these poems, rich and brilliant, yet down to earth, full of pain and beauty, often funny, always charming and deeply human. He is the kind of poet who makes you wish you had known him." -Anne Lamott

"Pete McLaughlin's poems make me laugh so hard I hardly notice that I'm also crying. The emotions these poems evoke are as wide-ranging as his subjects, styles, and tones. Pete is no longer among us, but his poems remain, and I can't recommend them highly enough." -Wyn Cooper

Author Bio

Pete McLaughlin grew up in San Francisco and was a standout runner in high school and at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, before earning his teaching credential. He was an elementary school teacher and a high school coach for years before moving to Santa Cruz, California, where he often played his trumpet alone on the bluffs looking out at the pounding Pacific.