Where's The Beef

It wasn’t really fair to go on about Billy Collins in yesterday’s entry without getting a little taste of his poetry.  But let me warn you, they are like chips, you can’t eat just one - anyway you won’t want to - they are delightful, witty, clever and relevant.  I have been nibbling away at them all day.  Most of all, I ‘get’ them and they make me laugh and think and wonder.
Collins was born and raised in NYC by a poetry reciting mother in the 1940s and 50s.  He went to Holy Cross before heading out west to get his MA and PhD at U.C. Riverside.  Collins attributes part of his great success to his many ‘appearances’ on National Public Radio.  He told Neal Conan that "listeners are kind of ambushed ... if a poem just happens to be said when they're listening to the radio," says Collins. "The listener doesn't have time to deploy what I call their 'poetry deflector shields' that were installed in high school — there's little time to resist the poem."  Painful but true.
In addition to teaching at Lehman College in NYC, Collins has also taught at Sarah Lawrence College and is a member of the faculty of SUNY Stonybrook Southampton College, where he teaches poetry workshop.
Collins was the U.S. Poet Laureate from 2001-2003 and New York State’s poet laureate from 2004-2006 (I didn’t even know states had poets!).  The 180 poems Collins chose for the program Poetry 180 were made into an anthology and followed by a second collection, 180 More Extraordinary Poems for Every Day (a fresh the supply of the ‘good’ stuff”.
Wondering how Collins connects to the library?  Well, I just went to my the library website and ‘ordered up’ four of Collins poetry collections and Billy Collins Live, a recording of Collins reading his poems at Peter Norton Symphony Space in NYC.  The library is always standing by, watching from the shadows,  just waiting for you to need something, like June Cleaver smiling in her apron and waiting for Beaver to walk in the door.

Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins (from poetry 180)

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

from The Apple that Astonished Paris, 1996
University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, Ark.


Forgetfullness by Billy Collins
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,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

"Forgetfulness" from Questions About Angels, by Billy Collins, © 1999. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. Used by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.


Litany by Billy Collins
You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine...
—Jacques Crickillon

You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
                                                                                                                                                                      
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I'm not the bread and the knife.

You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and—somehow—the wine.

"Litany", copyright © 2002 by Billy Collins, from Nine Horses by Billy Collins. Used by permission of Random House, Inc.