That was great!

I don't like poetry. I mean, I like this poem, and that poem. The Lady of Shalott, The Raven, you know, sort of the "usual suspects" of poetry. But I never actively seek out poetry. I don't like to curl up with a good book of poems on a rainy day. I don't "get" a lot of it, and I'm irritated by many of the modern poets. But my sister, who is an English teacher, introduced me to Billy Collins' poetry a few years ago, and I was hooked. Funny, deceptively simple, and yet tender and insightful at the same time. The Lanyard isn't in this collection, but you can find it online and should do so at once. Why I Do Not Keep A Gun in the House is in this collection. As is Sonnet. He writes a great many poems about being a poet, which far from being pretentious, are in fact funny and endearing. He plays with words in fun ways that don't say, "Look at me! I'm so clever!" but rather, "Look at this! And this! Isn't the language marvelous?!" This is a slim and wonderful little book of poems, whether you've read Collins before or not, you should own this.

Пеша с Били Колинс

Първата книга на Били Колинс, която прочетох в оригинал, се казва „Изкуството на давене” (1995). Не бях чувал името му преди това. Помня как затворих последната страница и след десет минути отново отворих на първата - и започнах пак. Въпросът, който изплува в съзнанието ми, беше: „На кого, на кого ми напомня?”. Тогава не успях да си отговоря. Няколко години по-късно получих отговор от самия автор. Каза ми: „Сигурно ти напомня на Били Колинс...”
През 2001 г. Били Колинс е избран от Библиотеката на Конгреса за поет лауреат на САЩ и по този начин името му се нарежда до цяла плеяда от изключителни поети, като Йосиф Бродски, Робърт Пински, Робърт Пен Уорън, Чарлс Симич и др. Но той отдавна е сред тях. В свое интервю, което дава за The Paris Review, споделя, че никога не би написал роман. Защо ли? Ето защо: Една от разликите между романиста и поета е тази, че писателят сякаш се настанява в дома ти. Искам да кажа, че за да прочетеш един роман, са ти нужни от три дни до три седмици. Представям си писателя като мой гост. Поетът е някой, който просто се появява. Вратата се отваря и ето го – поетът! Казва нещо за живота или смъртта, затваря вратата и го няма. Кой беше този маскиран мъж? Харесва ми това внезапно появяване. С други думи, не протакаш гостуването си.
За мен Колинс си остава един от най-пестеливите поети, които съм чел. И в същото време, ако можем да сравним всеки голям поет с някакъв музикален инструмент - било то виола, контрабас или флейта, мисля, че най-удачното сравнение за Колинс би било симфоничният оркестър. Защото той в един момент може да звучи небесно нежно като виола д’аморе, а в следващия да избухне като Берлинската филхармония. За поети като него трудно може да се говори тихо, с половин уста. Или го четеш и се възхищаваш на всяка дума в поетичната му вселена, или не четеш поезия изобщо.
И сега следва най-важното. Приканвам ви да разтворите новата стихосбирка на Били Колинс, която излезе на български от издателство „Стигмати”. Пеша през Атлантическия океан за мен е книга събитие. Тънката книжка, ако разсъждаваме с терминологията на мощта и внушението, всъщност е по-дебела и от „Антология на немската поезия.” А преводът на голямата преводачка Огняна Иванова сам по себе си е отделен поетичен шедьовър. Големият Робърт Фрост казва, че поезията е всичко онова, което се губи при превода. В този случай имаме прекрасни поетични загуби и в същото време големи преводачески постъпления, излезли изпод перото на Огняна Иванова. Много добре съм запознат със стихотворенията от тази книга в оригинал, но докато ги чета на български, усещам, че звучат още по-силно, по-звънко и мащабно. Звучат на място. На правилното си място. Това представляват големите поети. На всеки език, стъпили на твърдия фундамент на голямото изкуство, могат да преминат „Пеша през Атлантическия океан”.
... А следващия път, когато в Ню Йорк отново се срещна с Били Колинс, ще си разменим нови стихове, ще четем и аз пак ще му разкажа за българската поезия. Защото ние все пак сме едно цяло. И винаги ще бъдем. А ако приемем съвременната поезия и поезията въобще като едно безкрайно състезание с времето, тогава Били Колинс винаги е имал и ще има запазено място на почетната стълбичка. „Пеша през Атлантическия океан” е поредното доказателство.

Пейчо Кънев

http://www.kultura.bg/bg/print_articl...

Gifted to me by a dear friend, this is the first book of poetry I have ever voluntarily read. It is in style and subject remarkably suited to my tastes. It brought about several moments of contemplative peace not unlike those so frequently described in Collins’ poems.

“How senseless to dread whatever lies before us
when, night and day, the boats,
strong as horses in the wind,
come and go,

bringing in the tiny infants
and carrying away the bodies of the dead.”

t

By Lynn Hoffman "author: The New Short Course in...
t
I'm told that most modern poets don't like Billy
Collins. Good, I feel better now about not liking most modern poets. Collins tells little stories of
the inside and outside world, composes jokes small
and large, points to the obvious, leaves some
interesting part unsaid, tickles the daylights out
of you and makes everything seem new again.

The title is, I guess, a reference to the wonderful
book Sailing Alone Around the World by Captain Joshua
Slocum and to the quirky but ultimately disappointing
Journey Around my Bedroom by Javier de Maistre. In
fact, Collins himself refers to the armchair nature
of his adventures several times in the poems.

Thanks to him, I am, like other reviewers of this
collection reading poetry again. But mostly I'm living
some bits of it and writing little poems to my kid.

Thanks, Billy. Especially for The Nightclub.

--Lynn Hoffman, author of THE NEW SHORT COURSE IN WINE and
the forthcoming novel bang BANG from Kunati Books.ISBN 9781601640005

I love that Collins is both accessible and interesting.

For example, in a poem called *Japan*, which is a sort of an ode to a haiku, there's a bit in the middle:
"I listen to myself saying it,
then I say it without listening,
then I hear it without saying it."

Haven't we all had that experience, perhaps while remembering an auntie's favorite saying, or a bit of doggerel from the playground, or even the Pledge of Allegiance?

But then there's *Picnic, Lightning* which has clearly a lot going on under the surface, which we're reminded to examine by the end that wakes us up with:
"... all I hear is... the small plants singing
with lifted faces, and the click
of the sundial
as one hour sweeps into the next."

It's not enough to mention plants singing (flowers would have been cliché, but plants?) but Collins tells us that the sundial clicks! Since when do sundials click? Why does his?

There's also *Shoveling Snow with Buddha*

"All morning long we work side by side,
me with my commentary
and he inside the generous pocket of his silence..."

What? These are clearly poems to think about, to savor, even if they are easy to read as if narrative.

*Vade Mecum* made no sense to me until my son, recently graduated from a STEM college, offered his theory, which I really like. First, though, do look up the translation of the Latin title. Then tell me what you think.

Some of the poems are funny, or at least light, too. For example *The Rival Poet*. If you're not sure whether to read it seriously or humorously, you'll know to decide for the latter when you read the name of the rival's companion at a ceremony: "Contessa Maria Teresa Isabella Veronica Multaliere Eleganza de Bella Ferrari." And *Idiomatic* from which I learned that daydreaming, in France, is compared to "juggling balls of cotton." You'll have to read the poems*Forgetfulness* & *The Flight of the Reader* yourself.

Sometimes there's an allusion that some readers might not be able to catch. But I think most readers of any adult poetry would nod at the beginning of *The Night House* "Every day the body works in the fields of the world / mending a stone wall..."

And never forget to read poetry aloud! Even if inside your head, better if sotto voce, best if truly out loud. Poets work hard on the rhythms, assonances, etc., so respect that! Plus it makes it easier to understand, because you have to pay attention to the punctuation and thus you are given a chance to untangle the syntax which is often awkward given demands of the poet's chosen form.

This is the Collins' collection that contains favourites like: Budapest, The Dead, Japan, and Canada.
Turning the pages is like revisiting old friends and enjoying those quick lines that Collins is so adapt at, turning the world upside down and wondering why every day isn't spent in the same kind of new amazement. (This copy was a fun find at a second-hand store and why someone would give it up is beyond me.)

Quirky, witty poetry. I love it.
* “The Lanyard” by Billy Collins is my favorite. (But it is not in this collection.)

I am not a poetry person, and I can’t speak intelligently about what I think made this volume of poetry so enjoyable to me. I only know that it was, and I’m so glad a took a chance on it. Deceptively simple and beautiful.

I have to say that I glaze over at most poetry. I always feel that I need to "tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it". But perhaps this book helped me "walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch". Although I'll still do that with the hose for beating behind my back.

Poetry as New Yorker Cartoon: Approachable and Unsatisfying
Collins' poetry should not be ignored, except if you’re me (or sufficiently like me). Its straightforward style, little tricks, and approachable subjects create an easy entry to poetry for the uninitiated. Collins’ poetry can also be rewarding for the frequent reader of poetry insofar as she shares Collins' aesthetic sense. Alas, I do not. I don’t have a succinct way of describing my discontent, but it has something to do with a chronically winking author, too-smart, clean-cut form, and a whimsical and over-serious treatment of the mundane and pointless.

Many of the poems reminded me of a New Yorker cartoon in poem form. New Yorker cartoons always strike me as the shell of insights or jokes. One anticipates the change of expectations, the obvious pun, the literal treatment of figurative language. In the same way, once the reader picks up on Collins’ formulas, she can see the author planning out a series of serious comments about a phrase or topic not meant to be taken so literally. “Questions About Angels,” for example, is a faux meditation on the figure of speech, 'how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?’. Collins takes seriously the question itself and similar questions about how angels might pass their time. The irony is that this phrase has come to signify pursuits without consequence, which is exactly my complaint with this poem and several others using this form. There’s nothing that connects to my experience or knowledge about the world. And even if I believed in angels, I don’t understand the point of the poem. These are poems of vapid fantasy.

Another frustrating feature of Collins’ poems is how they end. After using the formula mentioned above for a few stanzas, Collins wraps up his poems with a

little insight at the end
wagging like the short tail
of a perfectly obedient spaniel
sitting by the door.
(117, “Lines Lost Among the Trees”)

That tail wag does nothing for me poetically (although I do appreciate the craft necessary to create these “satisfying” endings). I want the tail end of the universe or structure of feeling, not a simple, domesticated creature. My desire is antithetical to Collins’ intentions. Collins prefers his readers to take a more whimsical and breezy approach than rigorous and grave:

I want them to water-ski
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.
(16, “Introduction to Poetry")

While Collins is self-aware of his readership and intentional about his style, I think my criticism may have more merit than mere difference in opinion. The tone, trick, and stated intentions of Collins’ poems seems aimed at a lowest common denominator for accomplishing the meta, self-referential, and pithy. Like New Yorker cartoons, the poems play to readers’ sense of being smart, being in on a joke, but there’s not much to get: even though the poems use literary techniques, it’s a superficial usage: a specific kind of language game that most could recognize if they had also gone to a prep school or a few college literature classes. It’s a self-congratulatory, self-certifying kind of smart. While the tone is not derisive or acerbic, Collins’ tricks come across as smarmy in the same was that David Sedaris’ Calypso did for me.

Exemplary of this superficial and constrained literary engagement is the way in which Collins often takes a meta stance towards writing—talking about poetry as a subject, the writing process, himself as the author, the marginalia in a study book, or the reader of the poem. Too often, these seem like stylistic tics or exercises rather than rewarding and appropriate symbolic moves. “Sonnet” is a good example. It simply tells you about the sonnet form while adhering to the sonnet form:

All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now,
and after this one just a dozen

Instead of the meta stance expanding the meaning of the poem, the poem is self-contained and constrained. There’s certainly an art to this style, but it is a stylistic choice that rings hollow: There’s not much content to connect with or share with others. “Sonnet” and the other poems like it work mostly as didactic exercises.

To be fair, Collins has some small, shining moments: "I see all of us reading ourselves away from ourselves, / straining in circles of light to find more light.” But too frequently it is only these small excerpts and not the full poems that give me something substantive to consider. At first, Collins’ minor theme of the physicality of language also seems more open-ended and engaged with the reader’s experience. He personifies a library and its books in both “Books” and “Workshop”—

...words are food thrown down
on the ground for other words to eat.
I can almost taste the tail of the snake
in its own mouth,
if you know what I mean.” (65)

But here again, Collins can’t avoid a vapid meta reference. The ouroboros reference could refer to how all of language is creatively self-referential, but this view isn’t spelled out or a consistent theme in the collection. Instead, we get a throw-away reference and a casual appeal for the reader to get Collins' drift. And I don’t.

This last excerpt is representative of my reading experience for the collection: I appreciate the small figurative moments and thoughtful construction, but too much pointless subject matter and casual, empty self-reference left me underwhelmed. And I’m not alone—here are several other reviewers who had similar difficulties:

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"[This is] poetry for the sake of constructing a poem [and] issuing a musing,"
"This is just postcards from where poetry is supposed to live."
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"I remembered Collins as being proudly dull, writing almost exclusively about writing poems, and trying to trick you into thinking that every rudimentary action was a profound moment."
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"[H]e uses events of the daily, mundane and suburban nature and then fails repeatedly, sometimes even in a single poem, to say anything interesting, to say it in an interesting manner or to offer anything resembling a coherent and unique world view. It’s like reading USA Today in stanza form."
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P.S. Ugh plus I forgot to mention there are a few weirdly objectifying pieces. The worst two are a poem about taking Emily Dickinson's clothes off and a performatively detached assessment of a Victoria's Secret catalogue. Yick yick yick.