Ahh Billy Collins

Billy Collins is the rock star of the poetry world.  I was at a live performance/taping of A Prairie Home Companion once and Garrison Keillor's guest star was none other than poet Billy Collins. If Prairie Home Companion Fans swoon, then swoon they did over this short balding man.  Will you sign my arm Mr Collins?

Billy Collins made it cool to write poems that you could access easily, read in one sitting, and walk away feeling like you had read something profound.  He also makes you know, without a doubt, that you could be a poet too.

This is the first book of poetry I have ever purchased, and I felt proud to know and love this collection.  I have read it twice now, and I enjoyed every one.  Mr. Collins turns an ordinary activity into a profound revelation.  Pick up any of his books, google his name, find him on poetr.com.  He is always magnificent.  Go ahead, you can be a poet too. Swoon.

In Honor of National Poetry Month

I have been remiss this month in not mentioning that April is National Poetry Month.  I spent some time reading and writing poetry this month and I participated in National Poem in your Pocket Day which was April 14th by passing out a poem by Pat Schneider which I will post at the end.

I also wrote a villanelle for a friend who has terminal cancer.  I wrote the villanelle using lines from his caring bridge website where people expressed their love and heartbreak and memories.  This site and the sentiments it generated created so many wonderful lines that it prompted me to create a found poem for my friend which I mailed to him.  Here are a few stanzas:

From this day forward every morning

at some point between 7:00 - 8:00 a.m and 9:00 - 10:00 a.m.

I will hold you in my heart and thoughts.

Your openness to this most current process

The next stage in your life journey

Will take you from this day forward every morning

I don’t understand why the powers that be let nasty people walk this earth

and yet take away the beautiful people.

this thought I will hold in my heart and thoughts

I'd love to hear how you celebrated National Poetry Month?  Did you read poetry?  Write poetry? Share poetry?  Find poetry?  Here is the poem in your pocket that I promised.  Pat Schneider is a favorite of mine.

The Patience of Ordinary Things
It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they're supposed to be.
I've been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

The Hunchback of Neiman Marcus: Coming in April 2011

This truly unique collection of poems is arranged to form an interesting, bittersweet and really fun novel.  I had not read anything quite like this before (okay Canterbury tales and the ancient Greeks).  When I first opened it, I was surprised: the description never mentioned poetry.  It was an early reviewer book that I bid on and sad to say I probably would not have bid on it if I knew it was all poetry.

Hunchback read very quickly.  In about 400 pages there were about 200 prose poems with a smattering of meter and rhyme--and even a picture poem or two. They were generally sad, funny and thoughtful looks at a 50 year old woman's mid-life crisis which included a daughter leaving home, a mother in the hospital and a marriage that was alternately on the rocks and the best marriage in the world.  There were some real points of tension and sadness that built up even through the prolonged use of poetry.  I could hardly believe poems could produce this heightened state of interest in the characters.

The author, Sonya Sones, is better known for her young adult novels.  In fact, it appears as though they might be constructing a marketing campaign for young adults with this book so perhaps they hope the book to have a crossover audience.  I think this is a fun little book and you will enjoy it especially if you are interested in seeing what poetry can do for a narrative.  This was a clever way to play with words.

I found myself reading each poem and asking myself if it could stand alone as a poem.  If you saw it reprinted in the New Yorker by itself would you enjoy it as a poem or would you miss everything since it is really part of a longer narrative?  I decided that most of them could.  I leave you with one of my favorites:

I AM TIRED OF BEING A POET

Worn out by this business
of always having to see things
with "fresh new eyes."

Just once I'd like to sit by the fire
without trying to figure out how to describe it
in a way that no one else ever has before.

I'm tired of meter, tired of form,
tired of rhyme, tired of off-rhyme,
tired of repetition, tired of metaphors--

Those wild...somethings
that never fail to fly south for the winter j
ust when I need them the most.

I am rife with,
no...overrun with,
no...bursting with

the boredom,
the monotony,
the tedium

of constantly
having to look up words
in my thesaurus.

I'm fed up with allusion,
alienated by allegory,
allergic to alliteration.

But I am especially tired of similes--
those sneaky figures of speech
that ceaselessly elude me,

just as
they're eluding me
right now

on this cloudy morning
that's like...
a cloudy morning.

I've had it up to here
with trying to invent another original way
to say "I'm really sad."

I'm not as melancholy as the song
of the mateless mockingbird,
 I'm just plain miserable--

miserable
and sick and tired
of being a poet.