[Note: This review was originally published on Duncan Heights on March 6, 2011, with two photos that I no longer have access to. Though it is backdated to the original publish date, it has been republished with updated/working links on March 27, 2022.]
NOTE: This is barely a review; it’s more like a recap.
On March 1, I headed down to Azusa Pacific University by bus to see Billy Collins read some of his poetry. My mother, who works at APU, bought us both dinner ahead of time and we went together. (She said afterward that she was relieved to do something on campus that didn’t involve her own department.)
After an introduction by the head of the English department and the man after whom the James L. Hedges Distinguished Series (“celebrating the written word”) is named, Collins got up and charmed the audience with his wit and poetry. I’ve included a list of the poems he read with notes as I wrote them.
Reading List
- Monday, about the habits of poets
- The Sandhill Cranes of Nebraska, inspired by a former poet laureate Howard Nemerov
- Drinking Alone, after Li Po
- Grave, from the forthcoming collection Horoscopes for the Dead
- What She Said, in the voice of a young American woman (school age)
- Oh My God, just nine lines long
- The Dog, on his Master, in the voice of a young dog
- Greek and Roman Statuary
- Hippos on Holiday, see note below
- Hangover
- The Lanyard (for my mother)
- Building with its Face Blown Off, inspired by a photograph
- Creatures, mention of Hamlet
- Sunday Morning with The Sensational Nightingales
- The Four-Moon Planet, after Robert Frost‘s journals in which he wrote, “I have always envied the four-moon planet.”
- Stenius, noted Yeats‘s poem “The Wild Swans at Coole”
- I chopped some parsley while listening to Art Blakey‘s version of “The Three Blind Mice”
- You are the bread in the knife, wherein he took another poem’s first two lines and rewrote it (“It’s obviously improved,” he said.)
- On Turning Ten
Mom said she probably liked “Oh My God” the most—so much that she had me find it online when we got home so that she could read it to my father. I rather liked “Hangover” (“Or you can call it ‘Migraine’ if you’re not a drinker, as this school—of course—is dry,” he said, and got a lot of chuckles from the audience. APU is a Christian university, so “no alcohol” is kind of a school rule—yeah, right).
Collins said that he wrote “Hippos on Holiday” one day when he felt like he had nothing to say. In cases when he has nothing to say, he writes a phrase on the top of the page and then commits himself to writing something underneath it.
Q&A
After his reading, Collins allowed a few questions.
“Are your poems just funny because they’re funny, or are they disguises over sadness?” Basically, both.
“What is your writing process?” Everyone’s process is different.
“Why were you worried about explaining your poems?” Some people think that art/poetry/music should speak for itself, so explaining a poem just uses more words to say the same thing.
“What is the difference between poetry and prose? And, why do you write poetry?” Poetry is superior. In poetry, the words enjoy themselves.
“Is there a lot of technical knowledge needed to write poetry?” Poetry requires reading. Read all the poets. To write poetry, you must pretend to care about poetry more than you care about yourself.
“How useful is it knowing other languages?” Knowing Latin is the most useful. Knowing the meaning/history of words is important.
[Featured image by Nothing Ahead.]
