January 27: "Breaking Up," First Kisses to Final Kisses, Dreaming Up

Billy Collins on heartbreak . . . 

Breaking Up

by:  Billy Collins

Like the nomadic dollar

I pass to the cashier

behind the register

you are off to other hands.

We break up with things and people every day of our lives, from the moment we open our eyes in the morning until we close them again at night.  Some breakups are easy:  dropping your son off at school, knowing that he will be climbing back into your car in the afternoon.  Other breakups are more difficult--watching your daughter drive away from your house with all of her belongings packed up in her car, knowing she will never sleep in her childhood bedroom again.  At the end of every book or poem we read, we break up with its characters or subjects.  When you're done reading this blog post, you'll break up with it, as well.

Of course, breaking up with something or someone doesn't mean you erase them from your mind or heart.  No.  Every individual you encounter or movie you watch or taco you eat remains a part of you.  Forever.  I can still taste the pineapple I ate on a coral bay when I was on my honeymoon.  And I can still conjure up the feelings of standing in line to see the first Star Wars movie way back in 1977.  Nothing is ever lost, from first kisses to final kisses.

A few days ago, I submitted a huge grant to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).  It's the third time I've written an NEA grant for the library.  The first time, I requested $20,000 for programming inspired by Joy Harjo's An American Sunrise, and I got it.  The second time, I asked again for $20,000 to fund events focused on Andrew Krivak's The Bear.  I didn't get it.  My latest:  $16,600 for programming based on Roz Chast's graphic memoir Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?

I truly enjoy dreaming up experiences for people, whether it's an encounter with a U. S. Poet Laureate or an essay on the meaning of joy.  I love the ability of art or music or theater or writing to somehow change a person in a meaningful way.  Of course, the nature of any art is temporal.  It lives for a brief time and then evaporates like frost, leaving behind only memory.

This is true of even seemingly permanent works of art--paintings or sculptures or literature.  For instance, I've read The Catcher in the Rye ten or more times in my life, starting when I was ten or 11 years of age, and, with each reading, I experienced different emotions and reactions.  Because I was a different person each time, and Holden Caulfield meant something different to each one of those different persons.

So, loving any kind of art is about forming a relationship with it, and all relationships are temporary.  Eventually, there will be a breaking up/letting go.  Perhaps you will reencounter and reexperience that work or art again, and you will form a new and different relationship with it.  Or that work of art may just remain a lovely memory, like the taste of fresh pineapple on your tongue as you watch the sun set over the Pacific Ocean.

I've had my fair share of breakups.  Said goodbye to people and things I love.  Perhaps that's why I'm a poet.  I'm keenly aware of the passage of time and the need to preserve experiences in a tangible way through word and image.  That's what all art is about:  trying to capture lightning in a bottle.  Or on a canvas.  Or page.  Or with musical notes.  Or in a blog post.

Saint Marty has a piece of pizza to break up with now.

December 17: Touch-and-Go Creek World, Snow Storm, Yoopers

All this means is that the physical world as we understand it now is more like the touch-and-go creek world I see than it is like the abiding world of which the mountains seem to speak . . .

Yes, very little in the physical world is abiding.  Mount Everest.  The Pacific Ocean.  Lake Superior.  Enormous things that leave you breathless.  Maybe.  But even those landscape features are not that eternal.  There's erosion, pollution, earthquakes, avalanches, and blizzards.  If there's one thing that permanent about the physical world, it's impermanence. 

I'm looking outside right now, and all I see is snow.  A lot of snow.  I spent two hours this morning shoveling.  By the time I was done, I could have started all over again.  My guess is that, by the time this little weather event is over, I will have to shovel at least four more times.  This will also involve a great deal of profanity and many milligrams of ibuprofen. 

But, that's what winter in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is:  snow, wind, and changeable driveways and front yards.  It's a cold, long tunnel to Spring.  Nothing slows Yoopers down, though.  For example, my daughter has a dance lesson in a couple hours in Marquette, about 20 miles away.  We will be there for that lesson.  In fact, we'll probably be a little early.  Because that's the way Yoopers roll.

I do love winter.  Love the whole Currier and Ives vibe.  I better, because it will be an abiding presence in my life for the next five or so months.

Please vote for Saint Marty (Martin Achatz)

Voting for Next Poet Laureate of the U. P.

September 16: Friday Morning, Nobel Prize Again, Relaxing

It is Friday morning, early, and I'm enjoying the fact that I don't have to teach or edit or grade or anything today.  I'm a little bushed from the week's activities.  It seems like I've been running a race for the past five days, and I've just crossed the finish line.  Excuse me while I collapse on the ground and just...breathe.

I will be getting off work early today (around 11:30 a.m.), and I will be going out to lunch with my wife and son.  Then I will be cleaning my house and taking my daughter to her tap dancing class early this evening.  That's all that I really have to do.  If I accomplish anything else, I will count myself lucky.

You may not have realized it, but, between the first and second paragraphs above, I took a half-hour break to check some discussion threads I've been following about this year's Nobel Prize in Literature.  I already wrote about my obsession with the subject yesterday.  It seems, as of this morning, many odds makers are favoring Cormac McCarthy again this year.  (Last year, right up until the last day, he was one of the favorites.)  If McCarthy is leading the pack right now, that probably means he's not going to win.  Ask Amos Oz or Adonis, whove been in that position quite frequently.

I wil try to avoid daily reports about the Nobel Prize.  It's difficult for me around this time of year.  It doesn't help that my birthday (October 5) falls right around the day that they announce the award.  I just think God planned it that way so that, on my birthday some year, I will actually get a call from the Swedish Academy, telling me I've won the Nobel Prize in Literature.  It's, like, fate.

Well, I'm going to go make myself some breakfast and relax a little bit.  I may try to get a poem written in the next hour or so.

The day is spreading out before Saint Marty like the Pacific Ocean.  Dolphins.  Sea otters.  Kelp.  Waves.  Warmth.

My day...