Billy Collins

Discussion in 'Art & Culture' started by S.A.M., Mar 9, 2008.

  1. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    72,825
    Just introduced to him by a fellow poetry lover (I mean, like, right NOW)

    In the wake of 9/11:


    The Names

    Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.
    A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,
    And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,
    I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,
    Then Baxter and Calabro,
    Davis and Eberling, names falling into place
    As droplets fell through the dark.
    Names printed on the ceiling of the night.
    Names slipping around a watery bend.
    Twenty-six willows on the banks of a stream.
    In the morning, I walked out barefoot
    Among thousands of flowers
    Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears,
    And each had a name --
    Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal
    Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins.
    Names written in the air
    And stitched into the cloth of the day.
    A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox.
    Monogram on a torn shirt,
    I see you spelled out on storefront windows
    And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city.
    I say the syllables as I turn a corner --
    Kelly and Lee,
    Medina, Nardella, and O'Connor.
    When I peer into the woods,
    I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden
    As in a puzzle concocted for children.
    Parker and Quigley in the twigs of an ash,
    Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton,
    Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple.
    Names written in the pale sky.
    Names rising in the updraft amid buildings.
    Names silent in stone
    Or cried out behind a door.
    Names blown over the earth and out to sea.
    In the evening -- weakening light, the last swallows.
    A boy on a lake lifts his oars.
    A woman by a window puts a match to a candle,
    And the names are outlined on the rose clouds --
    Vanacore and Wallace,
    (let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound)
    Then Young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z.
    Names etched on the head of a pin.
    One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel.
    A blue name needled into the skin.
    Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers,
    The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son.
    Alphabet of names in a green field.
    Names in the small tracks of birds.
    Names lifted from a hat
    Or balanced on the tip of the tongue.
    Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.
    So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.
    http://www.sheilaomalley.com/archives/005081.html
    ---


    And another:

    Forgetfulness
    by Billy Collins

    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
    or 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

    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.


    Billy Collins, “Forgetfulness” from Questions About Angels. Copyright © 1999 by Billy Collins.
     
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  3. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Really detest that man's poetry, I do I do.

    But it's better than Rod Stewart's, and most of Robert Bly's, so as Official Poet of the Times he'll take up the space inoffensively.
     
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