The American poet Billy Collins published "The Art of Drowning" in his 1995 collection of the same name. With gentle humor, the poem investigates an old cliché about death: that people see their life flash before their eyes in their final moments. The speaker playfully wonders whether there might be some better way to "review" one's time on this earth (an animated film, perhaps?) before concluding that death is probably as mundane as everyday life. If you were to, say, fall "off a steamship," you'd simply sink to the bottom of the sea and quickly forget the world at the surface, which would keep chugging along without you.

• Read the full text of “The Art of Drowning”

• “The Art of Drowning” Summary

• “The Art of Drowning” Themes

  • 

    The Nature of Dying

    Where this theme appears in the poem:

    • Lines 1-28
  • 

    Humanity's Insignificance

    Where this theme appears in the poem:

    • Lines 14-16
    • Lines 17-28

• Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Art of Drowning”

  • Lines 1-5

    I wonder how ...
    ... desperate, final seconds.

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 6-10

    After falling off ...
    ... a conic hat.

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 11-16

    How about an animated ...
    ... volumes you envisioned.

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 17-22

    Survivors would have ...
    ... be a fish,

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 23-28

    a quick blur ...
    ... travel of clouds.

    

    

    

    

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• “The Art of Drowning” Symbols

  • 

    The Natural World

    Where this symbol appears in the poem:

    • Lines 21-24: “But if something does flash before your eyes / as you go under, it will probably be a fish, / a quick blur of curved silver darting away, / having nothing to do with your life or your death.”
    • Lines 25-26: “The tide will take you, or the lake will accept it all / as you sink toward the weedy disarray of the bottom,”
    • Lines 27-28: “leaving behind what you have already forgotten, / the surface, now overrun with the high travel of clouds.”

• “The Art of Drowning” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

  • Asyndeton

    

    

    

    

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    Where asyndeton appears in the poem:

    • Line 5: “desperate, final”
    • Lines 7-9: “wouldn't you hope / for a more leisurely review, an invisible hand / turning the pages of an album of photographs—”
    • Line 11: “How about an animated film, a carousel of slides?”
    • Lines 17-20: “Survivors would have us believe in a brilliance / here, some bolt of truth forking across the water, / an ultimate Light before all the lights go out, / dawning on you with all its megalithic tonnage.”
    • Lines 22-23: “it will probably be a fish, / a quick blur of curved silver darting away”

  • Consonance

    

    

    

    

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    Where consonance appears in the poem:

    • Line 3: “panic,” “act”
    • Lines 3-5: “submergence, / could startle time into such compression, crushing / decades”
    • Line 5: “vice,” “desperate,” “seconds”
    • Line 6: “falling off,” “steamship,” “swept away”
    • Line 7: “rush,” “floodwaters”
    • Line 10: “candles,” “conic”
    • Line 12: “expressed,” “essay”
    • Line 15: “eyebrow-singeing explosion,” “biography”
    • Line 16: “volumes,” “envisioned”
    • Line 17: “believe,” “brilliance”
    • Line 18: “bolt,” “truth”
    • Line 21: “flash”
    • Line 22: “fish”
    • Line 23: “quick,” “blur,” “curved silver”
    • Line 25: “tide,” “take,” “lake,” “accept”
    • Line 26: “sink”
    • Line 27: “forgotten”
    • Line 28: “surface”

  • Imagery

    

    

    

    

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    Where imagery appears in the poem:

    • Lines 4-5: “startle time into such compression, crushing / decades in the vice of your desperate, final seconds.”
    • Lines 14-15: “Your whole existence going off in your face / in an eyebrow-singeing explosion of biography—”
    • Lines 18-20: “some bolt of truth forking across the water, / an ultimate Light before all the lights go out, / dawning on you with all its megalithic tonnage.”
    • Line 23: “a quick blur of curved silver darting away,”
    • Line 26: “as you sink toward the weedy disarray of the bottom,”
    • Line 28: “the surface, now overrun with the high travel of clouds.”

  • Rhetorical Question

    

    

    

    

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    Where rhetorical question appears in the poem:

    • Lines 7-9: “wouldn't you hope / for a more leisurely review, an invisible hand / turning the pages of an album of photographs”
    • Lines 11-13: “How about an animated film, a carousel of slides? / Your life expressed in an essay, or in one model photograph? / Wouldn't any form be better than this sudden flash?”

• “The Art of Drowning” Vocabulary

  Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

  • Submergence
  • Vice
  • Leisurely review
  • A conic hat
  • Carousel
  • Model
  • Volumes
  • Megalith tonnage
  • Disarray
  • (Location in poem: Line 3: “the act of submergence”)

• Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Art of Drowning”

  • Form

  • Meter

  • Rhyme Scheme

• “The Art of Drowning” Speaker

• “The Art of Drowning” Setting

• Literary and Historical Context of “The Art of Drowning”

• More “The Art of Drowning” Resources

  • External Resources

    • Billy Collins and the Creative Process — Enjoy some pearls of wisdom about writing from one of America's favorite poets.

    • The Poem Out Loud — Listen to a reading of the poem via the Nashville Public Library. 

    • An Interview with Collins — Read the Paris Review's interview with Billy Collins, part of the magazine's "Art of Poetry" series. 

    • Collins's Life and Work — A biography of Collins from the Poetry Foundation.

  • LitCharts on Other Poems by Billy Collins

    • Afternoon with Irish Cows

    • Introduction to Poetry

    • On Turning Ten

    • The History Teacher

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