A Brief and Even Less Informative Introduction to Billy Collins

"We seem to always know where we are in a Billy Collins poem, but not necessarily where he is going. I love to arrive with him at his arrivals. He doesn't hide things from us, as I think lesser poets do. He allows us to overhear, clearly, what he himself has discovered."

            These are the words of Stephen Dunn, a fellow poet, on Billy Collins. I couldn’t think of a better way to begin an introduction to Billy. I can’t think of one. One: because borrowing from the genius of others is never a bad idea as long as you don’t call it yours (and as long as the genius isn’t a very large, angry man with a criminal record and your street address which, statistically, let’s be honest, is very unlikely so I say go for it… but, in that rare case, if that very large, angry man happens to ask you what genius gave you the idea… it was yours). And two: because I could seriously botch the rest of this introduction now and the work would still be Dunn. (Sorry, bad punn… but funn. Okay, I’m stopping now.)

My point is that, in a few lines, Stephen Dunn managed a description of Billy Collins that I’d need a few pages for. I just sat back a second after reading it and thought that's Billy to a T (and I know Billy… and T… actually, I don’t know either… but I’ve read up a little on one of them so let me just get back to writing – and no I’m not going to tell you which).

We do seem to always know where we are in a Billy Collins poem because of his method and voice. His method usually involves placing us on our feet, on the ground beside him, right from the beginning of a poem so we know where we are, we’ve done a quick, little inventory of our surroundings and we’re ready to walk with him. It’s his voice that sets the pace, like jogging with one of those cool, older brothers that could leave us in the dust at the drop of hat, and would, if he weren’t so cool – an older brother that doesn’t talk to you like you have a mental retardation, but he does simplify things a bit, if you know what I mean. (Side note to whom it concerns: if The Black Eyed Peas can wrap a pop song around the phrase let’s get retarded and sell a trillion copies of it, I shouldn’t have had to say mental retardation). No, to be honest, that’s not the greatest metaphor. Billy didn’t add a brief and colloquial quality to his voice out of a kindness to not make us eat his dust and it’s not that he just doesn’t want to talk to us like we should be wearing helmets to work (though, I should, most days and I know there are others), nope, it’s just who he is. If you click the link in the quote by Stephen Dunn you can read an interview where he talks about being more interested in sounding like himself than stylistic development.

Okay, let me stop this rambling and sum up: Describing a Billy Collins poem: honest, humble, deceptively simple, wonderfully rich, personal, intimate, spontaneous, exciting…

Well, if I wound up botching this introduction, remember, you should go back up to the top and read what Mr. Dunn had to say. I’m going to go grab that helmet.       

I Chop Some Parsley While Listening to Art Blakey's Version of "Three Blind Mice" 

by Billy Collins

And I start wondering how they came to be blind.

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.

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.