SAILING ALONE AROUND THE ROOM

tby Billy Collins

Completed: September 12, 2022

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 9780375755194

Rating (X/10): 6.9

——-

"when I found on one page
a few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
’Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love.'"

tThis book is a collection of previously published poems alongside a handful of new poems. I love Billy Collins and I think this book deserves five stars, but it's not as strong as some of his other stand-alone books. I didn't care for any of the new poems; they seemed mechanical and not worthy of a poet laureate.

tI did, however, enjoy "Paradelle for Susan." This is my first exposure to a paradelle form poem, and I thought it was brilliant writing by Collins. "Victoria's Secret" was also entertaining and creative.

Amazing. Billy Collins's poetry is such a delight to read. His style is almost irreverent--you can tell that he doesn't take himself too seriously. I don't usually read volumes of poetry straight through, but this one was an exception.

Incredible and poignant

honestly really enjoyed this. he portrays contentedness as very accessible and kinda made me wanna move somewhere cold. minus a full star for that weirdo poem about emily dickinson tho

I'm under the general impression that I like Collins' poetry. Several of his most famous pieces are among my favorites. This particular collection, tho...

When I started flipping through the table of contents, presuming it would be most efficient to list out the titles I liked and dismiss the remainder, the exercise underscored that what I mostly liked were the early-appearing poems and what mostly underwhelmed me were the later-appearing ones. For instance, the entire playlist from The Apple that Astonished Paris was great, as were most of those from Questions about Angels. The Art of Drowning repertoire was 50-50 at best; the ratio declines from there.

Often, Collins demonstrates how possible it is to give "everydayness" too much ink, to flub the turn, or to assume that one's powers of expression will suffice to carry the reader beyond the page and into your moment. Also included are numerous poems on the difficulty of writing, one of my pet peeves: for the easiest writing there is is writing about how hard writing is, not only because it's the one subject guaranteed to inspire a torrent of language from almost anyone, but also because it easily elicits universal sympathy, being the one aspect of writing to which absolutely everybody can relate.

Throughout these weaker inclusions, Collins gives the impression repeatedly of a poem in arrested development, a poem still discovering what it is about. Having written his way onto an unexpected overpass or discovered a surprising connection, he stops, and sends the lines to print. Poem after poem feels as if it was never edited in light of its entire being, the immaturity of its early lines allowed to persist and become flaws in adulthood.

I've already begun posting Billy Collins' poetry around my apartment.

In front of my bed:



On the refrigerator:



The book has inspired a couple poems.

Voice

After spending upward of a few hours
reading the poetry of Billy Collins,
his soft, monotone voice has begun
narrating my life.

When I walk to the bathroom,
his voice murmurs behind the splash in the toilet:

"I think of how many times I've risen
to use the bathroom and how the
noise of urine hitting the bowl of water
sounds like a strange symphony of busy
voices but it always ends before I can make too
much of it. When I wash my hands
and dry them on the towel, I think of
Art Blakey and his treatment of Autumn Leaves,
as I look out onto the summer afternoon,
the girls suntanning in the grass and
the boys kicking a soccer ball,
the straggled memories of my youth are coming to me now."

The 9:30 205 Bus from Baseline to Broadway

Then it's on to the bus, where I get
to people-watch.

One man with a yellow stain on his
white shirt has half his hand in his
mouth, trying to pick something from his
teeth while he stares at what
the red-head girl is reading next
to him. She's a friend of mine, but I don't make my
myself known because she has just
read a particularly funny part of her
book and she laughs. I don't want to
break this special bond she has made
with her book which is lighting up her brain
in ways only she could know. No, I can't
break that kind of intimacy with small
talk. So I watch her get off at her
stop without her even knowing that I had
seen her. Then In the Aeroplane over the
Sea comes onto my shuffle and I smile
as the bus rushes through the twinkling morning
traffic.

Reignited Passions

I may go a week without a poem if
I'm not careful.
Sometimes, whole days pass without even
the thought of a metered sentence.
I think, what's the point of capturing
life in the confines of a few phrases when
I am submerged in its plentiful bounty
every waking moment of my day?
I take the bus in the mornings; I sit
in my classes; I take notes; I ask my
professors questions; I contrive
small talk with that girl in Georgian England
History, the one with perfect, black hair that always
has her nose in this or that book; the talk goes nowhere;
I go to the dining hall to eat, sometimes I find a friend to eat with,
sometimes I eat alone, gnawing on a vegetarian burrito while I stare
blankly at the campus quadrangle; I go home to study, usually spanish
vocabulary, but more often it's youtube distractions.
Then I read Billy Collins and my day becomes
A Day, profound and glowing with the infinite
warmth of significance, every discrete bit of life waiting
to be written, waiting to be seen.

Utter perfection. Read with a gigantic smile on my face.

Very different from 'The Rain In Portugal' but I was an active reader this time, highlighting and drinking it in. Truly enjoyed this one though, will definitely be reading more by Billy Collins in the future.

I’ve never read Collins before this, and this collection felt so bland and uninspired I don’t think I will after either.

Poeta prestigiado. Poesias prestigiadas. Algumas têm a leveza de uma flor, outras são pesadas e duras como pedras. Todas muito bonitas, muito íntimas.


"What scene would I want to be enveloped in more than this one,
an ordinary night at the kitchen table,
floral wallpaper pressing in,
white cabinets full of glass, the telephone silent,
a pen tilted back in my hand?
It gives me time to think
about all that is going on outside--
leaves gathering in corners,
lichen greening the high grey rocks,
while over the dunes the world sails on,
huge, ocean-going, history bubbling in its wake.
But beyond this table
there is nothing that I need,
not even a job that would allow me to row to work, or a coffee-colored Aston Martin DB4
with cracked green leather seats.
No, it's all here,
the clear ovals of a glass of water,
a small crate of oranges, a book on Stalin, not to mention the odd snarling fish
in a frame on the wall,
and the way these three candles--
each a different height--
are singing in perfect harmony.
So forgive me
if I lower my head now and listen
to the short bass candle as he takes a solo while my heart
thrums under my shirt--
frog at the edge of a pond--
and my thoughts fly off to a province made of one enormous sky
and about a million empty branches."

”I walk through the house reciting it and leave its letters falling through the air of every room.”

Whenever I read Billy Collins’ poems, I want to hand them out to people nearby, as if they are small gifts, from him to all of us. They so perfectly exist within their words that they seem almost self-formed, and Billy Collins is merely their handler who has unwrapped them or undressed them and showed us their essence.

n  Forgetfulness
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"n

No events are unnoticed, no detail is irrelevant, no thought is imponderable.
He is a master, training his apprentices:

n  ”Introduction To Poetry

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.”n

And long after the classes, he sees the residues of his pupils in Schoolsville:
”Their grades are sewn into their clothes
Like references to Hawthorne.
The A’s stroll along with other A’s.
The D’s honk whenever they pass another D.

All the creative-writing students recline
On the courthouse lawn and play the lute.
Wherever they go, they form a big circle.”

Some poems are humorous, some poignant, many are deeply reflective, and all are precisely observant
I feel refreshed, grounded, included when reading his poems.
I like his world, and I like how he reminds us that this is our world too.

A couple of great reviews here, Spenk's and Steve's, capture the joy of it nicely.

As usual, Billy Collins delivered. While (as expected) not every single poem in the volume spoke to me, some hit me right in the heart with some stunning bolt. “Tuesday, June 4th, 1991” immediately became one of my favorite poems I’ve read, ever. Collins (or, can I call him Billy?) is the master of masters at observing small, slow moments and writing them down in a way that makes them feel significant, without turning them into more than they really are, as it seems like so much of poetry tries to do. It’s okay that a small moment is small, and won’t affect a whole life, or even any part of a life, but it can still be valuable in its own small sphere.