The Trouble with Poetry
and Other Poems
by Billy Collins
Random House, 88 pp., $22.95
Billy Collins has been called an "accessible" poet. I won't besmirch him or his work with that label. Microsoft Word is accessible, extra-wide toilet stalls are accessible--not Collins's finely crafted, rich verse. "Accessible" seems to imply we can pick up his latest collection and digest it like an inverted-pyramid account of a city council meeting, or the instructions for a new coffeemaker.
In photography, there's an old adage: if it can't be good, make it big and red. At least the photo will stand out. Incomprehensibility masquerading as depth is poetry's biggest dodge. Collins is a good enough poet that he doesn't have to make his work big and red. He has no need to hide behind a web of cryptic, convoluted verbiage. His poetry is penetrable, but never simplistic, never easy.
Walker Percy once said a person can know the meaning of life, but still has to find a way to make it through Wednesday afternoon.
This causes Collins the poet no undue existential strain. He is the poet of a Wednesday afternoon, the poet of the everyday. He casts a sensitive--at times ironic, at other times witty--eye upon the everyday moments of life. With his deft touch, the mystery in the ordinary comes alive.
"Monday" encapsulates his creed:
The birds are in their trees
the toast is in the toaster
and the poets are at their windows. . . . The clerks at their desks,
the miners are down in their mines,
and the poets are looking out their windows
maybe with a cigarette, a cup of tea,
and maybe a flannel shirt or bathrobe is involved. From a window, no matter the window,
there is always something to see--
a bird grasping a thin branch,
the headlights of a taxi rounding a corner,
those two boys in wool caps angling across the street.
There's nothing overly romanticized or drearily politicized; nothing of the confessional. Instead, there's attention to detail, mindfulness. But Collins, a former Poet Laureate, may be also hinting that something is missing in today's poetry.
Just think--
before the invention of the window,
the poets would have had to put on a jacket
and a winter hat to go outside
or remain indoors with only a wall to stare at.
And when I say a wall,
I do not mean a wall with striped wallpaper
and a sketch of a cow in a frame.
I mean a cold wall of fieldstones,
the wall of the medieval sonnet,
the original woman's heart of stone,
the stone caught in the throat of her poet-lover.
In an age that lacks an overarching metaphysical vision, the ancient themes may be particularly difficult. Still, they're not impossible, and Collins himself is able to speak to such perennial subjects as death and time without resorting to mere repetition of past masters or trite observations. A good example is "Reaper."
Driving along a country road on a spring morning,
I caught the look of a man on the roadside
who was carrying an enormous scythe on his shoulder.
He was not wearing a long black cloak
with a hood to conceal his skull --
rather a torn white tee-shirt
and a pair of loose khaki trousers.
But still, as I flew past him,
he turned and met my glance
as if I had an appointment in Samarra,
not just the usual lunch at the Raccoon Lodge.
The man with the scythe unnerved him. Neither a wave nor a thumbs-up would ease the fear.
And there was nothing to do
but keep driving, turn off the radio,
and notice how white the houses were,
how red the barns, and green the sloping fields.
> What is The Trouble with Poetry? Poetry, writes Collins, encourages the writing of more poetry,
more guppies crowding the fish tank,
more baby rabbits
hopping out of their mothers into the dewy grass.
He ponders how this will ever end:
unless the day finally arrives
when we have compared everything in the world
to everything else in the world,
and there is nothing left to do
but quietly close our notebooks
and sit with our hands folded on our desks.
The day has not come. Poetry fills him with joy and sorrow, [b]ut mostly . . . / with the urge to write more poetry, / to sit in the dark and wait for a little flame / to appear at the tip of my pencil. The trouble with poetry is a good trouble to have.
R. Andrew Newman writes and teaches in Nebraska.