The University News

Issue date: 10/3/05 Section: Culture

The Trouble with Poetry: and Other Poems
Billy Collins 2005

Billy Collins' name evokes a comfortable feeling. It's familiar and just a bit boyish. In the past, many readers have found a similar hint of childhood in his writing.

But please don't misinterpret my meaning. There's nothing juvenile about Collins' writing. I expected "The Trouble with Poetry: and Other Poems" to be another excellent collection. After all, he is the former poet laureate of the United States.

"The Trouble with Poetry" definitely didn't disappoint me. It's a complex collection that still maintains Collins' trademark playfulness. This is obvious immediately in the first poem titled "You, Reader" where Collins says "I wonder how you are going to feel/when you find out/that I wrote this instead of you."

It's definitely a stanza that made me pause and re-read before continuing. I was also intrigued by the later lines "you and I/who manage to be known and unknown/to each other at the same time."

This opening personal address serves as an effective way to pull the reader in for a discussion of life, death, childhood, love and writing.

The poem "In the Moment" lists the pointless minutiae of our lives but also grants us the heady lines "all I wanted was to be a pea of being/inside the green pod of time."

Many of the poems in this collection show a pointed perception of time's passage.

"The Long Day" illustrates this idea beautifully, opening with a description of breakfast "In the morning I ate a banana" then moving past the afternoon's mail to "the claw-footed bathtub/took one step forward,/or was it backward/I had to ask/as I turned/to reach for a faraway towel."

Creative writing students will appreciate "The Student" and its tongue-in-cheek lines about poetry instruction. This poem reveals that despite some of the darker poems present Collins hasn't lost his trademark sense of humor.

"The Drive" is another humorous one-albeit a rather dark humor. In the same vein is the "The Revenant" with its opening: "I am the dog you put to sleep.../I never liked you-not one bit."

"Introduction" will probably elicit at least a smile out of anyone who has attended a reading where the poet droned on and on about the poems before reading them.

There is a similar wit in the title poem which says "the trouble with poetry is/that it encourages the writing of more poetry."

True to his words, I'm sure that many will find this collection inspiring.

krussell@unews.com

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