Arts & Culture
Former Poet Laureate Billy Collins makes the crowd go silent
The Pointer
jmath438@uwsp.edu
Billy Collins, former two time Poet Laureate of the United States, engaged a receptive audience with his poetry on Thursday, Oct. 30 at the Sentry Theatre.
Students, faculty, and community members alike assembled to hear Collins. He read poems from his many published poetry collections, including “Sailing Around the Room,” “The Trouble with Poetry: And Other Poems,” “Nine Horses,” and his most recent collection released on Sept. 9, 2008, “Ballistics.”
Dr. William Lawlor, a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and a former student of Collins,’ introduced the celebrated poet.
“Collins is fascinated by simple daily things. A saltshaker, a bowl of lemons, a glass of water. In seemingly trivial events he discovers profundity,” Lawlor said. “He became, in time, the most popular poet in the United States.”
Collins first read a number of poems on the art and life of a poet. “Monday” was the first poem read, which begins, “The birds are in their trees/The toast is in the toaster/ And the poets are at their windows.” “Monday” is found in Collins’ collection “The Trouble with Poetry: And Other Poems.”
“A writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require attention,” Collins said, citing Flannery O’Connor to explain the purpose of the poem.
Collins discovers unusual things when writing and this is no different in his poem “Tension.” After taking a writing class in which he was taught not to use the word “suddenly,” to create tension, he mocks this rule and the use of the adverb.
“In poetry we don’t have to fall such dos and don’ts. In fact, violating them is the idea,” said Collins.
He recited, “Suddenly you were planting some yellow petunias/Outside in the garden/And suddenly I was in the study/Looking up the word oligarchy for the thirty-seventh time.”
Collins’ poems about dogs were also crowd favorites. Not necessarily written from nostalgia or a love of pets, his poem, “The Revenant,” was written from a deceased dog’s point of view.
He said, “I wanted to see if I could write a poem about a dog that was rather clean of sentimentality.”
He recited the poem, “I am the dog you put to sleep/ As you like to call the needle of oblivion/Come back to tell you this simple thing: I never liked you - not one bit.”
Collins ended the recital with a satire poem about a milestone birthday called, “On Turning 10.” The poem takes the idea of aging and death and applies it to the life of a child hitting his tenth birthday.
He reads, “The whole idea of it makes me feel/Like I’m coming down with something/Something worse than any stomach-ache/ Or the headaches I get from reading in a bad light/A kind of measles of the spirit/ A mumps of the psyche/A disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.”
After the reading and a short “Q-and-A,” Collins was also available to sign books.
