The Bronx Journal/February 2002 A 1 0 E D U C AT I O N

SAILING WITH BILLY COLLINS

ESTELLE HOLT Bronx Journal Staff Reporter

SAILING ALONE AROUND THE ROOM NEW AND SELECTED POEMS BILLY COLLINS RANDOM HOUSE, NEW YORK, 2001 172 PP., $21.95

f whimsical, blithe and disarming were words coined for a specific poet, they would fit none better than Billy Collins, Poet Laureate of the United States for 2001-2002, and Distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College of the City University of New York. In this latest collection of poems, some old and some new, Collins depicts ordinary events as rare explorations in the heart and mind and takes us with him to surprising places. What better place to start reading this col- lection than “Introduction to Poetry” about teaching his students about a poem’s many possibilities: its translucence, sound, spaces and light? But, he laments,

… all they want to do Is tie a poem to a chair with rope And torture a confession out of it. PHOTO: LENORE SCHULTZ They begin beating it with a hose sounds: “I can when passion and anger infuse her work. To find out what it really means. hear the library When Collins changes Dickinson’s line humming in the “My Life had stood--a Loaded gun” to (Who of us hasn’t throttled a poem to death night/a choir of “Life is a loaded gun,” he saps her anger to to make it “speak to us”?) authors are mur- “dress up” a line in his poem. Dickinson’s muring inside lines are: “My Life had stood—a Loaded Collins leaps from topic to topic, whether their books.” Gun--In Corners—till a Day/The Owner PHOTO: LENORE SCHULTZ describing how he methodically removes Anyone who passed—identified--/and carried Me away- accompany/its easy falling on the geome- his skin and organs in preparation for the treasures the authors who books summon - And conclude: “Though I than He—may try of the ground, on the flagstone path, the exertions of writing (“Purity”), or his the reader knows this kind of ecstasy. And longer live—he longer must—than I—for I slanted roof,/and the angles of the split-rail glowing testament to the morning after when he says “the line of have but the power to kill/Without—the fence.” It takes a sweet genius to “hear” comparing it to the rest of the day (in words”…”becomes a trail of crumbs/that power to die—(c.1863) Thelonius Monk through the patterns of “Morning”): we follow across a page of fresh snow; In this poem Collins’s tone is gentle and the snow in mid-air, and as they touch the …birds will eat the crumbs, and the voices restrained, but as he continues his words ground. This is the best— of the boy and his sister will recede in the become more ardent. In a departure from In “Winter Syntax” Collins introduces us Throwing off the light covers, his more aerie-like verse, Collins’s starts to the relationship of writing to the winter Feet on the cold floor, d e l i c a t e l y, but dives into much deeper scene: “A sentence starts out like a lone And buzzing around the house on espres s o — Collins removes the waters: “first, her tippet made of traveler/heading into a blizzard at mid- tulle”;…”then the mother-of-pearl button night,/tilting into the wind, one arm shield- Maybe a splash of water on the face, Maiden of Amherst’s down the back/are so tiny and numerous ing his face,/the tails of his thin coat flap- A palmful of vitamins- that it takes forever/before my hands can ping behind him.” Keen of eye, Collins “clips, clasps, straps, But mostly buzzing around the house on part the fabric/like a swimmer’s diving “paints” his words into pictures, as if he espresso. and whalebone stays, water/and slip inside.” She inhales as he were Monet dabbing his brush onto his loosens her garment; she sighs when the canvas in softly lush colors shaped like sailing toward the And concluding with: “heavy clouds on last of it comes off. lilies at water’s edge. the way/and the lawn steaming like a When Collins says: “it was like riding a Perhaps Collins’s greatest love is for the iceberg of her horse/in the early morning.” swan in the night/but of course, I cannot books and the paper and pencils that will In his nature poetry, we are awakened to nakedness.” tell you everything—“ he implies a union convert an idiosyncratic or fleeting thought the familiar world we rush by in the hum more physical than intellectual. It is the into an enduring poetic line. In “Tomes,” drum of our lives, and to its connection to reader’s choice to explore the meaning of Collins’s beloved library is where “a book all aspects of our lives including music, this line in the context of its overall con- [like this] always has a way/of soothing the even to writing itself. In “The Butterfly woods,” we are regaled with the thought text. nerves/quieting the riotous surf of informa- Effect” Collins “photographs” this fleeting that poetry can become a trail of crumbs In this poem, Collins has given us a tion/that foams around my waist.” These scene: “a gorgeous swallowtail/a brilliant dotting the surface of our consciousness, glimpse of a mind and body which is strug- metaphors portray how the clamorous mix of bright orange/and vivid yellow with then, be scattered into oblivion. gling to be free from constraints. But we mind can be subdued through the pleasure a soft/dusting of light brown along the Perhaps the most challenging poem in are left to wonder whether it is the cele- of reading. In the trance his library edges.” In “Picnic, Lighting,” Collins this collection is “Taking off Emily brated 21st century poet—or the 19th cen- induces, he summons a beautiful memory “sees... the soil is full of marvels/bits of Dickinson’s Clothes.” Of all the ways to tury poet who lived in obscurity—who is of his mother through a history book. His leaf like flakes off a fresco/redbrown pine understand her art and her life, Collins’s striving for greater freedom. ability to gently extract the picture of his needles, a beetle quick/to burrow back choice of “disrobing” Dickinson, the poet C o l l i n s ’s poems shy away from con- mother’s boney fingers and “her sunken under the loam.” In “Snow” the wintry who retreated to “obscurity’ because of tentiousness. Rather, tranquility, intro- eyes starting upward/beyond all knowl- scene evokes jazz musicians: “I cannot male critics, is the most audacious. spection and wit act as a balm to the fever- edge/beyond the tiny figures of history” is help noticing how this slow Monk Collins removes the Maiden of Amherst’s ishness of our times. To paraphrase him a capstone to Collins’s unique way of solo/seems to go somehow/with the “clips, clasps, straps, and whalebone stays, Collins “tends a little flame” of hope, with bringing together seemingly disparate snow/that is coming down this sailing toward the iceberg of her naked- delicacy and charm; he carefully mediates themes into a perfect whole. morning,/how the notes and the spaces ness.” Admirers of Dickinson might won- between our coarser selves and our capaci- In his poem, “Books,” Collins hears der about Collins’s view of such coldness, ty for gentleness.