Hunger

Painting by Terje Saether


Hunger


The fox you lug over your shoulder
in a dark sack
has cut a hole with a knife
and escaped.

The sudden lightness makes you think
you are stronger
as you walk back to your small cottage
through a forest that covers the world.


Billy Collins

Posted over on Poetry Society of America

Audience

Audience

1.
As I'm writing, I'm always reader conscious.
I have one reader in mind, someone who is in
the room with me, and who I'm talking to, and
I want to make sure I don't talk too fast, or
too glibly. Usually I try to create a
hospitable tone at the beginning of a poem.
Stepping from the title to the first lines
is like stepping into a canoe. A lot of things
can go wrong.

2.
As I'm writing,
I'm always reader conscious.
I have one reader in mind,
someone who is in the room with me,
and who I'm talking to,
and I want to make sure
I don't talk too fast, or too glibly.
Usually I try to create a hospitable tone
at the beginning of a poem.
Stepping from the title
to the first lines is
like stepping into a canoe.
A lot of things can go wrong.

Billy Collins

Posted over on English Language Poets

1. Billy Collins prose quote.
2. Line breaks by Glenn Buttkus

Cliche

Cliché


My life is an open book. It lies here
on a glass tabletop,
its pages shamelessly exposed,
outspread like a bird with hundreds
of thin paper wings.

It is a biography, needless to say,
and I am reading and writing it
simultaneously
in a language troublesome and private.
Every reader must be a translator
with a thick lexicon.

No one has read the whole thing but me.
Most dip into the middle
for a few paragraphs,
then move on to other shelves,
other libraries.
Some have time only
for the illustrations.

I love to feel the daily turning
of the pages,
the sentences unwinding like string,
and when something really important
happens,
I walk out to the edge of the page
and, always the student,
make an asterisk, a little star,
in the margin.


Billy Collins

Posted over on Poem-A-Day

The Future

The Future


When I finally arrive there—
and it will take many days and nights—
I would like to believe others
will be waiting
and might even want to know how it was.

So I will reminisce about a particular sky
or a woman in a white bathrobe
or the time I visited a narrow strait
where a famous naval battle had taken place.

Then I will spread out on a table
a large map of my world
and explain to the people of the future
in their pale garments what it was like—

how mountains rose between the valleys
and this was called geography,
how boats loaded with cargo plied the rivers
and this was known as commerce,

how the people from this pink area
crossed over into this light-green area
and set fires and killed whoever they found
and this was called history—

and they will listen, mild-eyed and silent,
as more of them arrive to join the circle
like ripples moving toward,
not away from, a stone tossed into a pond.


Billy Collins

Posted over on The New Yorker

The Rival Poet

The Rival Poet


The column of your book titles,
always introducing your latest one,
looms over me like Roman architecture.
It is longer than the name
of an Italian countess, longer
than this poem will probably be.
Etched on the head of a pin,
my own production
would leave room for The Lord's Prayer
and many dancing angels.
No matter.
In my revenge daydream I am the one
poised on the marble staircase
high above the crowded ballroom.
A retainer in livery announces me
and the Contessa Maria Teresa Isabella
Veronica Multalire Eleganza de Bella
Ferrari.
You are the one below
fidgeting in your rented tux
with some local Cindy hanging
all over you.


Billy Collins

Posted over at Gin & Tonic

Hangover

"Hangover"


If I were crowned emperor this morning,
every child who is playing Marco Polo
in the swimming pool of this motel,
shouting the name Marco Polo back and forth
Marco Polo Marco Polo

would be required to read a biography
of Marco Polo—a long one with fine print—
as well as a history of China and of Venice,
the birthplace of the venerated explorer
Marco Polo Marco Polo

after which each child would be quizzed
by me then executed by drowning
regardless how much they managed
to retain about the glorious life
and times of
Marco Polo Marco Polo


Billy Collins

Posted over on In the Margin

Ode to Billy Collins

Ode to Billy Collins



There are no
Poetry books on the
Best Seller list.
I search the list of twenty fiction books
In vain.
Sorry, Billy.

Thin books, high prices.
The short lines
Frighten timid readers,
So much
Packed emotion in
Such a small space,
In so few letters and words,
Simple statements
Stirring the pot of uneasy memory.

The average reader
Would much rather
Read pap, mindless,
Mind-numbing, than
Read something with
Substance.
John Q. Public comes across “Obituary”
By accident,
Thinking it was just that,
A roll call of the dead,
He mumbles to his wife,
“He ain’t no Rod McEuen.”


T. Mooney

Posted over on Writeonill