A night recovering from Billy Collins

I feel as if I should be trying to catch up, and striving till I catch up and pass the others, racing toward completion of the shared goal of writing a novel of 50,000 words by the end of this month, even shy a day in order to print and mail the thing.  But I have a small part of a large debt to pay soon, because I got a book of poems, Billy Collin's poems no less, 'The Apple That Astonished Paris.'
Actually this was B.C.'s 'first real book of poems,' as he calls it in the preface to this lovely book, with a cover designed by Chiquita Babb, printed by University of Arkansas Press in Fayetteville. I got the book in an impulse, spurred by the realization that I might be able to get him to sign the book after his reading at the Savannah Country Day School last night near White Bluff, in Savannah's tony faubourg by the marshes. And the point I was trying to make is, now that I got his dedication to her signed, I think I'd like to read the poems and comment on them before I give the book over to her.

We open past the preface, interesting to the inquisitive mind, unlike too many, into the poem 'Vanishing Point' with the epigram from Paul Cézanne:

'With an apple I want to astonish Paris.'

'You thought it was just a pencil dot
art students made in the middle of the canvas
before they started painting the barn, cows, haystacks.'

This is both a commentary on the appreciation of art and architecture, and an aesthetic and philosophical meditation on the nature of time and space. I won't post any more of this, out of deference to Mr. Billy Collin's rights.  And I really don't want to spoil any more of what could be a wonderful surprise to the literary and philological palate.

I must tell you about this short poem titled 'Walking Across the Atlantic.'  It is both visually miraculous and a whole lot of fun to read, silently or aloud.  

'The Blue' is phenomenological, more challenging to the adventurous and male spirit, while 'Schoolsville' is whimsical, pleasing without seeming to want to please.

Resuming this essay after a good night's sleep, I found my place in 'Hart Crane,' a lovely epitaph for a self burial at sea, perhaps a start for a requiem on the poet who through himself off a ship.  There is a Zen to this, a quiet acceptance.  Billy Collins gives dignity to what society has termed an abomination, the act of suicide.

Maybe more a propos for me today, as we approach the winter of 2006-2007, is 'Winter Syntax,' another delightful flower of Collin's imagination.

'A sentence starts out like a lone traveller
heading into a blizzard at midnight,
tilting into the wind, one arm shielding his face,
the tails of his thin coat flapping behind him.'

So starts the first stanza, which like a good opener to any story or novel, prompts the reader to follow with the eyes of the imagination. Just don't forget to turn the page, for this as with some other occasions in the book, Collins must continue on the next page, much as some of us encounter either the measured dividing line of midnight.

That Billy Collins enchants, that he knows how to bring his familiarity with French or European romantic traditions, is part of his charm.  'Flight of the Troubadour' starts, as with many of Mr. Collin's poems, with a stated action,

'For a good hour I have been singing lays
in langue d'oc to a woman who knows
only langue d'oil, and odd Picard dialect
at that.'

The two lonely syllables on the fourth line elicit a smile, and give pause, which gives a pleasant emphasis.  It's nice to know langue d'oeil is still alive and spoken, and that some one else understands it, no, not just that, knows it.  

But NO, again, Collins has had his joke, this time on me.  Last night after the reading at Savannah Country Day School, he revealed that his father had a great sense of humour. Not only that, but he was an inveterate (not Collin's choice of word, I paraphrase-- alas for my middle-aged memory!) practical joker. Why do I make this aside? Read the poem. (I won't spoil the surprise, which is an important element in Collin's poetry).

As a matter of fact, I'll put off finishing this essay, because I can.  And because I need to start this novel. I need to start today. Let's see if the wife will let me borrow her book back to finish this.  I'd better be nice to her.

This is a work in progress, by no means an abandoned essay (wink).

ISBN: 1-55728-822-4 (hardbook)
ISBN: 1-55728-832-2 (paperback)