Billy Collins

A mostly enjoyable introduction for me to Billy Collins, one of our more popular contemporary poets. A lot of these poems are about taking a specific moment of his life and slowing things down, turning contemplative, taking it as a stepping off point to consider, well, Life and Mortality. Thus inviting the reader to do similarly, to take a moment away from busyness and distraction to think of more meaningful things. Which is something poetry is really useful for, though it has been shoved to the margins of culture, with most people worrying (not without some cause) that poetry is usually really difficult to understand! Collins seems to be trying to reach more of these potential readers without being utterly simplistic and trite either: striving for absolute clarity, eschewing innovation, using easy to follow visual lines, not using words like "eschewing", but also avoiding over earnestness and banality.

It's not a bad trick, though one downside is a lack of really memorable lines and passages, poetic phrasing that makes you think "wow". However there are images that stick out. These include a country mouse that steals a match and while running with it in its mouth behind the house's walls accidentally becomes

suddenly thrust ahead of his time -
now a fire-starter, now a torchbearer
in a forgotten ritual, little brown druid
illuminating some ancient night.

Another memorable image concerns James Whistler's famous painting of his mother, commonly called "Whistler's Mother", but insensitively titled "Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1" by Whistler himself:

but when I strolled along the riverbank,
after my museum tour,
I imagined how the woman's heart
could have broken
by being demoted from mother
to mere arrangement, a composition without color.

Collins also imagines the injustice if Botticelli had titled The Birth of Venus, "Composition in Blue, Ocher, Green, and Pink", or the absurdity of the reverse - Mark Rothko titling one of his "sandwiches of color", as Collins puts it, "Fishing Boats Leaving Falmouth Harbor at Dawn." Funny stuff!… (more)

[[Billy Collins]] is the laureate of the everyday, capturing the lyrical nature of small moments. Some of the entries in this collection even cross into meta territory, poetry about poetry, or about a single poem. In any event, he is a one of a kind. There is no obfuscation, no riddles, no deeply inside jokes or references, as is so common of the poets of today who substitute the unknowable, untranslatable, or enigmatic for art. Each of the poems is clear in meaning without losing any lyrical mysticism. Why must modern poets purposely hide any meaning behind language or cute structure.

Highly Recommended!!!!!
5 bones!!!!!… (more)

Billy Collins is a great introduction to contemporary poetry. He uses plain language and simple straightforward structure that treats a first-time poetry reader nicely. It’s good training for the reader unaccustomed to how poetry communicates, transmitting some of the same rhetorical complexities of most poetry in a sleek, unimposing form. Collins’ writing is witty and often serene. And now and again he somehow ends up being profound. I find myself returning to him when my mind wants a lazy Sunday stroll.

Since my first reading, I have heard some complaints about how Collins treats certain subjects. Only one of his poems comes to mind, one where he objectifies a woman/women in an image that works toward the greater point of the poem. Not all objectification is pornographic. It is often emotional or intellectual but objectification all the same. So I understand that some of these criticisms are warranted.… (more)