February 19: Poet of the Week, Billy Collins, "The Trouble with Poetry"

I am choosing a Poet of the Week that I have chosen before.  He is a poet that my father really liked because he was of my father's generation, sort of.  This poet is usually clever and funny and, also, deeply moving.  My father appreciated that, too.

The poet is Billy Collins.

There a kind of snobbery among some poets when it comes to Collins.  They see his work as a little too clever, his poems as little more than set-ups for a punchline.  I think people underestimate Billy Collins.  Perhaps they envy him a little, because he is popular and funny and also profound at times.  

Anyway, my dad liked Billy.  Therefore, I declare the next seven days to be Billy Collins Week.

Saint Marty can see his father smiling.

The Trouble with Poetry

by:  Billy Collins

The trouble with poetry, I realized

as I walked along a beach one night--

cold Florida sand under my bare feet,

a show of stars in the sky--

the trouble with poetry is

that it encourages the writing of more poetry,

more guppies crowding the fish tank,

more baby rabbits

hopping out of their mothers into the dewy grass.

And how will it ever end?

unless the day finally arrives

when we have compared everything in the world

to everything else in the world,

and there is nothing left to do

but quietly close our notebooks

and sit with our hands folded on our desks.

Poetry fills me with joy

and I rise like a feather in the wind.

Poetry fills me with sorrow

and I sink like a chain flung from a bridge.

But mostly poetry fills me

with the urge to write poetry,

to sit in the dark and wait for a little flame

to appear at the tip of my pencil.

And along with that, the longing to steal,

to break into the poems of others

with a flashlight and a ski mask.

And what an unmerry band of thieves we are,

cut-purses, common shoplifters,

I thought to myself

as a cold wave swirled around my feet

and the lighthouse moved its megaphone over the sea,

which is an image I stole directly

from Lawrence Ferlinghetti--

to be perfectly honest for a moment--

the bicycling poet of San Francisco

whose little amusement park of a book

I carried in a side pocket of my uniform

up and down the treacherous halls of high school.