Recent poet laureate Billy Collins has achieved an enduring legacy not only as a poet but also as a rib-tickling performer of readings and You Tube videos. His numerous collections of poetry, include Ballistics (2008), She Was Just Seventeen (2006), The Trouble with Poetry (2005); Nine Horses (2002); Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems (2001); Picnic, Lightning (1998); The Art of Drowning (1995), which was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; Questions About Angels (1991), which was selected by Edward Hirsch for the National Poetry Series; The Apple That Astonished Paris (1988); Video Poems (1980); and Pokerface (1977).
Born in New York City in 1941, he celebrated his sixtieth year as U.S. Poet Laureate. Collins's other awards include fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 1992, at the invitation of the New York Public Library, he served as "Literary Lion. He has conducted summer poetry workshops in Ireland at University College Galway, and taught at Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence, and Lehman College, City University of New York.
I twice attended readings he gave on the west coast in 2001 and still remember the delicious wit and captivating intelligence. Far more than a light verse poet, Collins is an ironist who holds up a subtly distorted mirror so readers or listeners can see themselves in new ways. One poem I find unforgettable is titled Forgetfulness.
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of . . . .
He published that one at age 50, an age when I first began buying books and renting videos that I later realized I had already seen or read. But there is no problem with long-term memory. In Nostalgia he writes:
Where has the summer of 1572 gone? Brocade and sonnet
marathons were the rage. We used to dress up in the flags
of rival baronies and conquer one another in cold rooms of stone.
And in First Reader he recalls:
I can see them standing politely on the wide pages
that I was still learning to turn,
Jane in a blue jumper, Dick with his crayon-brown hair,
with a ball or exploring the cosmos
of the back yard, unaware they are the first characters,
the boy and girl who begin fiction.
Speaking as he did a bit ago about sonnets, he has this to say about the form:
Sonnet
All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now,
and after this one just a dozen
to launch a little ship on love's storm-tossed seas,
then only ten more left like rows of beans.
But as we all know, it's more than merely a poem that goes on for fourteen lines. What about rime scheme and meter.
How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan
and insist the iambic bongos must be played
and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines,
one for every station of the cross.
And after the octave comes the volta or turning point of the sonnet, or as Collins expresses it:
But hang on here while we make the turn
into the final six where all will be resolved,
where longing and heartache will find an end,
where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen,
take off those crazy medieval tights,
blow out the lights, and come at last to bed.
Collins's sense of rhythm and timing appear connected with a definite musical bent. He has a number of poems that deal with jazz or the blues. Musicians in particular will enjoy The Invention of the Saxophone, Piano Lessons, Exploring the Coast of Birdland, The Blues, Nightclub, The Discovery of Scat, and my all-time favorite I Chop Some Parsley While Listening to Art Blake's Version of 'Three Blind Mice'.
My focus has been on the playful and humorous. Such poems are counterbalanced by an equal number that are weighty and philosophical. Collins's oeuvre will appeal to readers who want to grin at Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes as well as those who wish to be teased into contemplation by verses such as Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty, I Pause to Admire the Length and Clarity of Their Titles.
With high-school students in mind, Collins produced 180 More: Extraordinary Poems For Every Day. The number corresponds to the number of days in the academic year. The poems represent a wide range of literary voices. Among the most recognizable are Linda Pastan, W. S. Merwin, Robert Bly, Sharon Olds, Czeslaw Milosz, and Ted Kooser. His hope was that high schools would include a thought-provoking poem at the end of the daily announcements. Field hockey tryouts are at 3:30. The yearbook committee meets at four in the library conference room. And here is the poem for the day.
I wish the program had been in place when I was a student as well as during the almost 40 years I taught high school English. It would have been a bright spot in my day.