Another Essay

Off and On, a Tiny Darkness

 An essay on

Billy Collins’s

I Chop Some Parsley While Listening to Art Blakey’s Version of “Three Blind Mice”

 By

Jonathan Eyer

Written in two parts

And written, respectively, in two parts of my life,

Inextricably married within it,

For better or worse,

In sickness or in health:

(Off and On My Medication)

Part I:  Off: The Sun is my creator, dearest consolation, mother of coincidence, all that leaves me at nightfall.

In the small chair in the narrow space between my bed and window, in the vast and silent now, the ambiguous monument of then, I curb my eyes to the poem. Some part of my brain communicates to another: focus… Billy Collins, Parsley, Art Blakey… In a moment, the pathos of the mice, their tiny darkness I’ve taken to heart; and in some corner of that heart, the oldest constituent (the sage with Alzheimer’s, the Magus who vanquishes the world by closing his eyes), commissions a rumor in Planck Time, a presage always answered before it is heard and the answer, the gravity of the fall back into myself, is felt first in my eyes: two damned, little Newtonians only ever needing the hint of it, the suggestion, to be quelled. And there my gaze through the center of the page, my palm behind it, the tattered rug, the downstairs neighbor-child at play, the near-center of the earth, until it emerges, completing the palindrome, to find a man-child born with the same quiet desperation, just as consummate and bush-league at hiding it, the same awkward knees, the same generally agreed upon cuteness that’s just as arguably wasted on him, the same laugh, sadness, just as prone to commas; who drew at birth the same short straw: an inherent, inexorable and grossly bloated purpose of feeling. Or it was charged of him by gods unconcerned with the cost (but I have a feeling he prefers the former). I watch him, just for a few of the in-between moments, the local fluencies of life. I feel for him. I laugh: a nod to the irony. I laugh to beat the alternative. I wish him luck, let him go. Somewhere in the dream, I tried steering toward some comfort. I found him in search of some reprieve, to not feel alone, in hopes, to not feel at all for a moment, to avoid having to feel for Mr. Collins, for the mice.  

So, okay, Billy, let’s wonder.

I close the book, set it down. I let the words of the poem swarm my mind, the thoughts, ideas. I try to feel the whole of it, see it. Not as I’m inclined to see it right now, but as it really is. I try to let all the pieces come in at once, the way one might reflect on all the traits and qualities that made up an uncle or friend. Or perhaps, more like the pause a writer might take at the end of a significant day: trying to put it in context somehow, give it a name, search the palette for just the right colors.

Somewhere deep down, I do have some vague clue as to how a great deal of people would see this poem as lighthearted and fun, and for a moment I’m sure I want to mention something of the colloquial nature of the speaker’s voice, how it lends to the humor of his work by… it lends... it adds a… it does so much for the… it lends to… no, it makes it easier to… for the reader to… to… I just had it… when he moved from the couch to the window… I did just have it, for a second but, right now, my heart is a lens, refracting every image into its most desperate form: 

The Art Blakey was playing the first time they made love, the chopping they would always do together, he still brings two knives to the cutting board, still talks of his day, gently sways to the side while cutting, tries to remember just where her shoulder met his, the size of her hand on the knife, but she’s slipping away, the scent of her already gone, the long hairs he would find about house, the worn picture in his wallet, and he’s hating himself for it. Oh, god, let me remember, he thinks, oh, god, give me that at least… his hand fumbles to the knife. He restarts the song, sways.

The mice are siblings and will gather what happiness they can from each other, alone in their tiny darkness, their father having been caught by the Farmer shortly after the youngest was born, their mother having left when the oldest was able to feed the others. He had happened to wake up early that morning and found her moving through one of the side walls toward the crawl space, the back yard. She was dragging a few things she had tied into a piece of lace that the children’s father had brought home to her when the oldest was born. She didn’t say anything for a minute when he stopped her. She just stood there, one part of her heart breaking, one part broken and some sliver of it convinced that she could be young again, that she could live just one second of that late summer day she had spent with her first love at the old house, before it had burned down, when the apples had started falling off of the tree and the man and his wife and child had headed into town dressed in their nicest clothes, the zeal of their spinning tires leaving the place in a golden cloud of dust and inhibition, and she, alive with the pulsing impatience of what was to come. 

She had stood there staring at her oldest, wanting to press her nose into his cheek, glad that he couldn’t see what was in her eyes, that she didn’t have to face his. He had only said the word mother upon finding her and had then remained silent, sensing something was wrong. She only said that she was leaving, wasn’t coming back, he couldn’t come with her, to look after his brothers and that she was sorry. A little piece of the lace satchel got caught on a splintered board as she turned to leave. She struggled with it quietly for a moment until it was loose. He just sat there listening for what he could of her in between the deafening pounds of his heart, and when he couldn’t hear her anymore, when he couldn’t pretend to, he found the little piece of torn lace on the splintered board by the smell that his mother had left on it.

He told them little despite their questions: he had found her making her way to the kitchen, she had said she was dying, that she didn’t want them to find her like that, that this was the best way, that she loved them all so much, he told them he couldn’t stop her, he heard her make it past the icebox, out into the open… he never went any further. They stopped asking him to. 

It was a year before the younger two went into the kitchen at all. The middle boy would stare out the hole some nights, wondering which of the floor tiles she touched last. It was some time later that they ran after the farmer’s wife out of sheer drunk, carless, childish, giddiness. They were just starting to get that back. They hardly even realized they were in the kitchen until the knife came down. Only a couple of them moved through the grass after that or cornered a baseboard. They would bring what food they could find home to the little one. The oldest would wish he could roar in laughter, horse around, show him they didn’t have to fear the farmer’s wife. He wished that were true. 

On just the right mornings, or just the wrong ones, if he happened to wake up earlier than usual, he would take out the little piece of lace that she left behind, search it for any last bit of her, and think of the strangeness of the moment it was torn: he, sitting paralyzed, but for the beat of his heart, and she, trying to silence her struggle with it in front of him, but every so often, a quick breath in… a sharp exhale out.

       This is impossible. This is impossible. This is impossible. This is impossible.

       There was something in the humanity of the poem, the honesty, the intimacy, something of the humor, something positive, something I wanted to say. 

        This is impossible.     

           

Part II:  On: The Sun is a ball of gas – and I was blind mouse.

§  Oh, the Humanity 

I think of Billy Collins in his kitchen chopping parsley. I think of the moment the poem was born in, the general essence of the poem that comes through in the first line: the mind wanders, the heart says my turn, that spontaneous heart, that rogue wave of emotion that leaves us speechless from time to time, or searching for some hidden comfort food in a pantry we’d memorized half an hour earlier, or trying to explain that our breakdown at the company party was merely allergy related – some idiot co-worker must have done the Lambada with their cats before arriving. That’s why we had to leave so early, oh, how we wanted to stay… I think of how that wave isn’t so rogue for me, closer the beat of a drum. I think Well, regardless of our differing levels of emotion, it’s emotion itself that’s so human and it’s the humanity of this poem that so appeals to me. It’s such a human moment the speaker goes through. It’s human: the roaming mind, our need to question, analyze, fill in the blanks. Billy’s voice is ideal for conveying this type of moment (I’ll go a little further into describing his voice a little later – it more than deserves its own paragraph). A large part of being a great poet is being great at summing up all or part of what it means to be here, what it means to be human. The author obviously knows the difference between the evocations of tiny darkness and inability to see and, once again, he succeeds in grasping our attention, funny bone, heart strings and, well, it’s Billy, so whatever he’s looking for. If he wanted to, I’m sure he could make me laugh with a poem on the holocaust, or cry with a poem on rubber bands.

By the first line, whether or not one thinks they’ll care in the slightest bit about these mice or their champion (Billy, of course, the author of this new and more honest perspective on their plight, the Mandela of Mice Rights whether he knows it or not), by the end, to some extent, they’re hard pressed not to care, especially for Mr. Collins. It’s in what he reveals of himself, and so of us in the process, human nature, that pulls us to him: 

Questioning:

       And I start wondering how they came to be blind.

Exploring:

If it was congenital, they could be brothers and sisters

and I think of the poor mother

brooding over her sightless young triplets.

Or was it a common accident, all three caught

in a searing explosion, a firework perhaps?

If not,

if each came to his or her blindness separately,

how did they ever manage to find one another?

Would it not be difficult for a blind mouse

to locate even one fellow mouse with vision

let alone two other blind ones?

And how, in their tiny darkness,

could they possibly have run after a farmer's wife

or anyone else's wife for that matter?

Not to mention why.

               New perspectives, Compassion, Pain and Humor in the face of it:

Just so she could cut off their tails

with a carving knife, is the cynic's answer,

but the thought of them without eyes

and now without tails to trail through the moist grass

or slip around the corner of a baseboard

has the cynic who always lounges within me

up off his couch and at the window

trying to hide the rising softness that he feels.

By now I am on to dicing an onion

which might account for the wet stinging

in my own eyes, though Freddie Hubbard's

mournful trumpet on "Blue Moon,"

which happens to be the next cut,

cannot be said to be making matters any better.

He questions a given. He deepens the questions. He peers into the plight of these mice. He peers from different angles. He begins to be moved. He tries to fight it off with the cynic who always lounges within (him), but it’s too late. He’s already in too deep.   

Written by someone else, this poem could’ve played out with no real point or value but, since it’s Billy, we’re given an honest human moment. We laugh. We get it and, somewhere in the back of our heart and mind: the most important gift: we’re reminded of what he does for a living: remind us that, through all success or error, fortune or misfortune, through anything, through everything, we’re not alone, that others get it too, even when getting it means not getting it.   

As I imagine it (and will remain to and will not be swayed), even the austere, the coldly practical or just plain cold, who would swear, had they their druthers, that they would themselves give the mice the business end of the carving knife and Mr. Collins a stern talking to for writing this type of nonsense, foolishness (a grown man, no less), well, it’ll hit them. Perhaps, while they’re hand-scrubbing a dish because washers are for the lazy and wasteful, or perhaps while counting out the exact change for some cashier, or maybe it’ll be when they’re on their deathbed realizing that they were the wasteful, but, as I imagine it, it’ll hit them. It’ll hit them and they’ll realize that they’re tied to Mr. Collins, that they always were, and that that was the heart of the poem: our connection to each other. I imagine it that way for the same reason I imagine that the guy who nearly ran me off the road today later created his own little one-car-pileup: it just makes me happier. (Yes, it’s a little idealistic and yes, it makes me happier and no, I’m not still imagining that guy getting in a wreck; a ticket, maybe…)

As far as the mice (I raise my hand), guilty as charged. I cared. Actually, I might’ve gotten a little choked up. Even after the meds. In the crafting of his questions, the poem, I saw them as he did: as little people, little, suffering people. And to the mice, if you’re reading this, guys, remember who your friends are when Oprah calls, when Disney’s ready for a movie.

§  Oh, the Humority

I won’t go too deep into Collins’s wit or humor. It’d be like trying to describe what he looks like to someone unaware they were standing beside a picture of him. Anyone can find some Billy Collins and I highly recommend it. I will say, that it’s very dry, very tongue-in-cheek. He doesn’t beg you for a laugh and he doesn’t need to. From this poem, here were my chuckle moments, if you will:

-          …how did they ever manage to find one another?

-          Just so she could cut off their tails
with a carving knife, is the cynic's answer…

-          … but the thought of them without eyes
and now without tails to trail through the moist grass

or slip around the corner of a baseboard
has the cynic who always lounges within me
up off his couch and at the window
trying to hide the rising softness that he feels.

-          By now I am on to dicing an onion
which might account for the wet stinging
in my own eyes, though Freddie Hubbard's
mournful trumpet on "Blue Moon,"

which happens to be the next cut,
cannot be said to be making matters any better.
                   

§  It’s a bird… it’s a plane… it’s both?

    One of the amazing abilities Collins seems to have is posing two completely different thoughts, or ideas or emotions in a single statement. An example can be found in the line:

how did they ever manage to find one another?

This is in reference, of course, to the three blind mice and it’s a line that thrills me with its duality. It can be humorous or heartbreaking. Logically, it’s funny stuff: they’re blind. How’d they find each other? Perhaps, though, the reader is already as concerned for the poor mice as the author is. Or worse yet, perhaps the reader is… I don’t know, say… a thirty-something crazy, off his meds and on a bad day [and let’s just say he’s also got a fairly masculine frame and a face you wouldn’t kick out of bed for eating crackers… (just to make him a little more three dimensional as a character)], and at this point in the poem he’s trying to imagine how difficult life would’ve been, in the tiny darkness of his youth, without his brothers and sisters to lean on. Let’s suppose he’s imagining one of them groping through the darkness alone: not so funny now, huh? 

            Okay, I might’ve botched that example, but I’m sure you follow. Of course, it doesn’t have to be one or the other. That line, like much of the poem, is both humorous and heartbreaking. I love Collins’s ability to often say so much with so little. 

§  The Genuine Article… and noun… and verb… and adjective…

            I think that one of the biggest reasons that Collins, a former U.S. Poet Laureate, is so widely read and loved is his uniquely honest, pure and genuine voice, its simultaneous simplicity and depth. Oh, just wait, that’s the mere tip of the iceberg. There are plenty more adjectives coming up. In fact, there are so many qualities that come together in Billy’s voice that I’m not even sure where to begin. 

Let’s start with honesty. I chop some parsley- is a prime example (though, any Collins poem I’ve read as of yet would do just as well). In any word, sentence, line or stanza, we find that the speaker is just as honest with us as he is himself (which is about as much as you could ask from anyone, I suppose). This poem is honesty, from concept to construct. (The little jewel of it being his admittance of the rising softness, that many men would find pretty embarrassing (especially over fictitious, handicapped mice), and his effort quell it. 

Related to that honesty is a tone of humility. Collins just never seems that interested in pretension. He never seems interested in meandering through the pages, feigning a hole in the pocket of his ivy-league vocabulary, eating your time like so many cheese puffs, wiping his fingers on your shirt: oops, did I get some sense-of-entitlement on you? Oh, Consuela… His voice is of a colloquial nature, yet deep and rich in complexity. His poems are such that one has no trouble shouldering up to them right off the bat, or a qualm rediscovering them later, mining all the gold they missed the first time around (breezing through that first-read-accessibility). It also lends much to the immediacy of his voice, the punch of his humor. 

His voice is apt. He doesn’t ramble on incoherently or off topic like much of my stuff. (Neither do his attempts at a little self-deprecating humor every now and then seem as bland and awkward. Though, now that I think about it, to call my comment an attempt at humor is to mildly imply that it’s not really true… which it kind of is… so it’s awkward, unfunny and inaccurate… I can’t even talk down to myself properly… hmm… that’s comforting. Moving on…) 

            There's a sense of spontaneity he brings to the poem. It’s as though he’s just relaying a day, an evening, a moment, like he writes things as they happen and the poem becomes a journey we’re taking right along side of him, in real time. As a result, we’re not in the dark on anything. We find everything out when he does. It makes the poem more exciting, more interesting. Also, the less something seems planned out, predesigned, the less is expected of it and so, I think, the more we enjoy it. (I’m taking notes here.) I’m sure the spontaneity in Mr. Collins’s poems is by his design to serve some greater purpose. I like to imagine that it’s to draw his relationship with the reader even closer by inviting us to walk through the work by his side, rather than to sit before him and listen. 

            Also, there’s an intimacy in his voice that draws us closer. There’s something about someone that will be that honest with you about the little thoughts most would hide, about themselves in general and he remains that way. (I keep using the words honest and honesty because true intimacy just doesn’t seem possible without them. I’m sure Billy would agree.) He never seems to put any sort of filter between himself and the reader. Take the poem at hand, for example: even when calling it the onions for a moment, he could’ve been trying to convince himself more than us. (Lord knows, I’ve called the onions and stuck to my guns.) Who he is, who we are, all the strange and variable energy released through all of life’s collisions, great or small, it all flows from him, seemingly, without a second thought, like a man without fear, as though he tasted it years ago and decided it wasn’t for him. 

§  In The End

In the end, we have to take a second to try to soak in the extraordinary thing that Billy Collins has done here. That he can take something like Three Blind Mice, something never to be given a second thought, and make us think, make us laugh, make us care, well, I’m reminded of the final stanza of a poem by Stephen Dunn entitled Visiting the Master in which a student is seeking in vein some single key to the mastery of poetry: 

Oh, return to zero, the master said.
Use what’s lying around the house.
Make it simple and sad.

Of course, the poem made clear that there was no one, simple key and that the final stanza was more of an attempt to dispatch the annoying youngster, but the truth of it remains I think, and “I Chop Parsley-” is an extraordinary example of how, from the deciduous day, the low and steady breeze of falling moments that wouldn’t register with most of us as poem-worthy or topic-worthy or that we just wouldn’t be able to arrange or reveal or display in such a way that would bring out what mattered so much to us, from those crumbs of the day that would wind up falling through the cracks of our mind’s couch, floorboards, Billy brings us so much. He catches them for us, calls them ours, presses them in a book: a flower, between the pages, we’ll discover once we’ve forgotten: what it means to be here, what it meant to be here…