Picnic, Lightning is a collection of poetry by Billy Collins, published in 1998. His fourth book of poetry, it was his first to be widely published (selling over 50,000 copies)The Selling of Billy Collins, a November 18, 2001 article from The New York Times and his last before election as United States Poet Laureate.
The title poem is a reference to Humbert Humbert's description of his mother's death in the second chapter of Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. "My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three...."
References