A Magical Event: Water, Water Poetry Collection by Billy Collins
By Ashley Shields, NYS Writers Institute intern
In his poem “Introduction to Poetry,” Billy Collins appears to address a group of students or audience and encourages them to approach poetry with an element of play. Toward the end of the poem, he writes,
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.
Often students dread learning about poetry. They do not consider poetry might also dread being interrogated by them. While Collins uses a few metaphors for poetry such as a “color slide,” water seems apt. The same and ever-changing, filled with the strange and familiar, something that inspires enough awe that moves people to explore its depths, poetry at its best yields us endlessly. In my opinion, fun has always been at the core of Collins’s poems; a lightness and a reminder of how good it is to be alive and that (also) makes his work a wonderful invitation to poetry.
Collins was born in 1941 in New York City. After earning his PhD at the University of California-Riverside, he went on to cofound the Mid-Atlantic Review. Collins was nicknamed “the most popular poet in America” by Bruce Weber in the New York Times, and he has published 12 collections of poems that have garnered national and international acclaim. The Poetry Foundation cites poet-critic Richard Howard's praise of Collins: “He has a remarkably American voice…that one recognizes immediately as being of the moment and yet has real validity besides, reaching very far into what verse can do.”
To read further: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/billy-collins
Water, Water is a special homage to the magic everyday life. In her review of Water, Water by Billy Collins, Maureen Corrigan at NPR writes “his simplicity of language invites cynics to regard him as simplistic. Those of us who've long read his work know better.” The beauty of Collins’s work emerges through his relatable subjects, things we may glance over or over-rationalize, Collins breathes new life into them or simply draws your attention back. This new collection will be published today (November 19th) and Collins will join us for a conversation with WAMC's Joe Donahue on Monday, Nov. 25.
7 p.m. Monday, November 25
Conversation/Q&A with WAMC's Joe Donahue
Page Hall - University at Albany Downtown Campus
135 Western Avenue, Albany NY 12203
More event information at https://www.nyswritersinstitute.org/billycollins
In anticipation of his appearance in Albany, I have linked a few favorite poems below:
Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty, I pause to Admire the Length and Clarity of their Titles
By Billy Collins
It seems these poets have nothing
up their ample sleeves
they turn over so many cards so early,
telling us before the first line
whether it is wet or dry,
night or day, the season the man is standing in,
even how much he has had to drink.
Maybe it is autumn and he is looking at a sparrow.
Maybe it is snowing on a town with a beautiful name.
"Viewing Peonies at the Temple of Good Fortune
on a Cloudy Afternoon" is one of Sun Tung Po's.
"Dipping Water from the River and Simmering Tea"
is another one, or just
"On a Boat, Awake at Night."
And Lu Yu takes the simple rice cake with
"In a Boat on a Summer Evening
I Heard the Cry of a Waterbird.
It Was Very Sad and Seemed To Be Saying
My Woman Is Cruel—Moved, I Wrote This Poem."
There is no iron turnstile to push against here
as with headings like "Vortex on a String,"
"The Horn of Neurosis," or whatever.
No confusingly inscribed welcome mat to puzzle over.
Instead, "I Walk Out on a Summer Morning
to the Sound of Birds and a Waterfall"
is a beaded curtain brushing over my shoulders.
And "Ten Days of Spring Rain Have Kept Me Indoors"
is a servant who shows me into the room
where a poet with a thin beard
is sitting on a mat with a jug of wine
whispering something about clouds and cold wind,
about sickness and the loss of friends.
How easy he has made it for me to enter here,
to sit down in a corner,
cross my legs like his, and listen.
Source: Poetry (June 1999)
The Genius
By Billy Collins
is standing at a stove in a bathrobe
stirring a pot of soup with a long wooden spoon
Earlier this afternoon
he was busy in the margins of a heavy book
and tonight he will take a walk
in the garden of calculus
but now there is only the vegetable soup,
the circling of the spoon,
the easy rotation of the wrist,
and the aroma of onion and rosemary--
the kind of moment when a brainstorm
is very likely to roll in.
Not when you are concentrating
under a lamp in your study
but when you are up in the woods
lifting a stone onto a wall,
or washing a glass in the sink--
you look up and see a cloud in the window
and then there is only you,
the wet glass and the cloud
which is slowly taking the shape
of an astonishing idea.
Source: Poetry (December 2000)
Nostalgia
By Billy Collins
Remember the 1340s? We were doing a dance called the Catapult.
You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade,
and I was draped in one of those capes that were popular,
the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.
Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,
and at night we would play a game called “Find the Cow.”
Everything was hand-lettered then, not like today.
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.
Out on the dance floor we were all doing the Struggle
while your sister practiced the Daphne all alone in her room.
We borrowed the jargon of farriers for our slang.
These days language seems transparent, a badly broken code.
The 1790s will never come again. Childhood was big.
People would take walks to the very tops of hills
and write down what they saw in their journals without speaking.
Our collars were high and our hats were extremely soft.
We would surprise each other with alphabets made of twigs.
It was a wonderful time to be alive, or even dead.
I am very fond of the period between 1815 and 1821.
Europe trembled while we sat still for our portraits.
And I would love to return to 1901 if only for a moment,
time enough to wind up a music box and do a few dance steps,
or shoot me back to 1922 or 1941, or at least let me
recapture the serenity of last month when we picked
berries and glided through afternoons in a canoe.
Even this morning would be an improvement over the present.
I was in the garden then, surrounded by the hum of bees
and the Latin names of flowers, watching the early light
flash off the slanted windows of the greenhouse
and silver the limbs on the rows of dark hemlocks.
As usual, I was thinking about the moments of the past,
letting my memory rush over them like water
rushing over the stones on the bottom of a stream.
I was even thinking a little about the future, that place
where people are doing a dance we cannot imagine,
a dance whose name we can only guess.
Copyright Credit: Billy Collins, “Nostalgia” from Questions About Angels. Copyright © 1991 by Billy Collins. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Reprinted with the permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.
Source: Questions About Angels (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991)
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