Billy Collins (1941- )

Billy Collins (1941- ) ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

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Billy Collins Introduction to Poetry from The Apple that Astonished Paris (Fayetteville, Ark: University of Arkansas Press, 1996). 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. ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Nostalgia Billy Collins Remember the 1340's? We were doing a dance called the Catapult.You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade,and I was draped in one of those capes that were popular,the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,and at night we would play a game called "Find the Cow."Everything was hand-lettered then, not like today. ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry Billy Collins

Nostalgia (2) Where has the summer of 1572 gone? Brocade and sonnetmarathons were the rage. We used to dress up in the flagsof rival baronies and conquer one another in cold rooms of stone.Out on the dance floor we were all doing the Strugglewhile your sister practiced the Daphne all alone in her room.We borrowed the jargon of farriers for our slang.These days language seems transparent a badly broken code. ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry Billy Collins

Nostalgia (3) The 1790's will never come again. Childhood was big.People would take walks to the very tops of hillsand write down what they saw in their journals without speaking.Our collars were high and our hats were extremely soft.We would surprise each other with alphabets made of twigs.It was a wonderful time to be alive, or even dead. ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry Billy Collins

Nostalgia (4) I am very fond of the period between 1815 and 1821.Europe trembled while we sat still for our portraits.And I would love to return to 1901 if only for a moment,time enough to wind up a music box and do a few dance steps,or shoot me back to 1922 or 1941, or at least let merecapture the serenity of last month when we pickedberries and glided through afternoons in a canoe. ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry Billy Collins

Nostalgia (5) Even this morning would be an improvement over the present.I was in the garden then, surrounded by the hum of beesand the Latin names of flowers, watching the early lightflash off the slanted windows of the greenhouseand silver the limbs on the rows of dark hemlocks. ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry Billy Collins

Nostalgia (6) As usual, I was thinking about the moments of the past,letting my memory rush over them like waterrushing over the stones on the bottom of a stream.I was even thinking a little about the future, that placewhere people are doing a dance we cannot imagine,a dance whose name we can only guess. ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry Billy Collins

Billy Collins OssoBuco Billy Collins I love the sound of the bone against the plateand the fortress-like look of itlying before me in a moat of risotto,the meat soft as the leg of an angelwho has lived a purely airborne existence.And best of all, the secret marrow,the invaded privacy of the animalprized out with a knife and swallowed downwith cold, exhilarating wine. the dish ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Billy Collins OssoBuco (2) I am swaying now in the hour after dinner,a citizen tilted back on his chair,a creature with a full stomach--something you don't hear much about in poetry,that sanctuary of hunger and deprivation.you know: the driving rain, the boots by the door,small birds searching for berries in winter. ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Billy Collins OssoBuco (3) But tonight, the lion of contentmenthas placed a warm heavy paw on my chest,and I can only close my eyes and listento the drums of woe throbbing in the distanceand the sound of my wife's laughteron the telephone in the next room,the woman who cooked the savory ossobuco,who pointed to show the butcher the ones she wanted.She who talks to her faraway friendwhile I linger here at the tablewith a hot, companionable cup of tea,feeling like one of the friendly natives,a reliable guide, maybe even the chief's favorite son. ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Billy Collins OssoBuco (4) Somewhere, a man is crawling up a rocky hillsideon bleeding knees and palms, an Irish penitentcarrying the stone of the world in his stomach;and elsewhere people of all nations stareat one another across a long, empty table. ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Billy Collins OssoBuco (5) But here, the candles give off their warm glow,the same light that Shakespeare and Izaac Walton wrote by,the light that lit and shadowed the faces of history.Only now it plays on the blue plates,the crumpled napkins, the crossed knife and fork. ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Billy Collins OssoBuco (6) In a while, one of us will go up to bedand the other will follow.Then we will slip below the surface of the nightinto miles of water, drifting down and downto the dark, soundless bottomuntil the weight of dreams pulls us lower still,below the shale and layered rock,beneath the strata of hunger and pleasure,into the broken bones of the earth itself,into the marrow of the only place we know. ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Billy Collins Questions About Angels Billy Collins Of all the questions you might want to ask about angels, the only one you ever hear is how many can dance on the head of a pin. No curiosity about how they pass the eternal time besides circling the Throne chanting in Latin or delivering a crust of bread to a hermit on earth or guiding a boy and girl across a rickety wooden bridge. Do they fly through God's body and come out singing? Do they swing like children from the hinges of the spirit world saying their names backwards and forwards? Do they sit alone in little gardens changing colors? ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Billy Collins Questions About Angels (2) What about their sleeping habits, the fabric of their robes, their diet of unfiltered divine light? What goes on inside their luminous heads? Is there a wall these tall presences can look over and see hell? If an angel fell off a cloud, would he leave a hole in a river and would the hole float along endlessly filled with the silent letters of every angelic word? If an angel delivered the mail, would he arrive in a blinding rush of wings or would he just assume the appearance of the regular mailman and whistle up the driveway reading the postcards? ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Billy Collins Questions About Angels (3) No, the medieval theologians control the court. The only question you ever hear is about the little dance floor on the head of a pin where halos are meant to converge and drift invisibly. It is designed to make us think in millions, billions, to make us run out of numbers and collapse into infinity, but perhaps the answer is simply one: one female angel dancing alone in her stocking feet, a small jazz combo working in the background. She sways like a branch in the wind, her beautiful eyes closed, and the tall thin bassist leans over to glance at his watch because she has been dancing forever, and now it is very late, even for musicians. ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Billy Collins Building with Its Face Blown Off Billy CollinsHow suddenly the private Is revealed in a bombed-out city, How the blue and white striped wallpaper Of a second story bedroom is now Exposed to the lightly falling snow As if the room had answered the explosion Wearing only its striped pajamas. Some neighbors and soldiers Poke around in the rubble below A picture taken on Dec. 18, 1995 shows a general view of "Battalion boulevard" in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, which was completely destroyed during the confrontations between Bosnian and Croatian Forces in 1993. ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Billy Collins Building with Its Face Blown Off (2)And stare up at the hanging staircase, The portrait of a grandfather, A door dangling from a single hinge. And the bathroom looks amost embarrassed By its uncovered ochre walls, The twisted mess of its plumbing, The sink sinking to its knees, The ripped shower curtain, The torn goldfish trailing bubbles. It’s like a dollhouse view As if a child on its knees could reach in And pick up the bureau, straighten a picture. ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Billy Collins Building with Its Face Blown Off (3)Or it might be a room on a stage In a play with no characters, No dialogue or audience, No beginning, middle and end--Just the broken furniture in the street, A shoe among the cinder blocks, A light snow still falling On a distant steeple, and people Crossing a bridge that still stands. And beyond that--crows in a tree, The statue of a leader on a horse, And clouds that look like smoke, ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Billy Collins Building with Its Face Blown Off (4)And even farther on, in another country On a blanket under a shade tree, A man pouring wine into two glasses And a woman sliding out The wooden pegs of a wicker hamper Filled with bread, cheese, and several kinds of olives. ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Billy Collins ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry 1: a prayer in a Christian church service in which the people at the service respond to lines spoken by the person who is leading the service 2: a long list of complaints, problems, etc. ▪ He has a litany of grievances against his former employer. ▪ The team blamed its losses on a litany of injuries. • Litany • Billy Collins • You are the bread and the knife,The crystal goblet and the wine...-Jacques Crickillon • You are the bread and the knife,the crystal goblet and the wine.You are the dew on the morning grassand the burning wheel of the sun.You are the white apron of the baker,and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.However, you are not the wind in the orchard,the plums on the counter,or the house of cards.And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.

Billy Collins Litany (2) It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,but you are not even closeto being the field of cornflowers at dusk.And a quick look in the mirror will showthat you are neither the boots in the cornernor the boat asleep in its boathouse.It might interest you to know,speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,that I am the sound of rain on the roof.I also happen to be the shooting star,the evening paper blowing down an alleyand the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table. ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Billy Collins Litany (3) I am also the moon in the treesand the blind woman's tea cup.But don't worry, I'm not the bread and the knife.You are still the bread and the knife.You will always be the bread and the knife,not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow--the wine. a 3 year old recites "Litany" ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Billy Collins (1941- )