Billy Collins writes about the occupation of poetry . . .
If This Were a Job I'd Be Fired
by: Billy Collins
When you wake up with nothing,
but you are nonetheless drawn to your sunny chair
near the French doors, it may be necessary
to turn to some of the others to get you going.
So I opened a book of Gerald Stern
but I didn't want to face my age
by writing about my childhood in the 1940s.
Then I read two little Merwins
which made me feel I should apply
for a position in a corner sandwich shop.
And it only took one Simic,
which ended with a couple on a rooftop
watching a child on fire leap from a window,
to get me to replace the cap on my pend,
put on some sweatpants and go for a walk
around the lake to think of a new career,
but not before I told you all about it
in well, look at this, five quatrains--
better than nothing for a weekday,
I thought, as I headed out the door.
It is the eve of Christmas day. Presents have been opened. Copious amounts of eggnog have been consumed. Cookies have been popped into mouths like Tic Tacs all day long. And lots of love has been shared.
First, blueberry/chocolate chip pancakes with my wife and son (per my son's request). Then I played pipe organ for a 10 a.m. Mass--the last of my church musician duties this yuletide. Afterward, I forced my son to stand in front of the manger scene for a picture in his ugly Christmas sweater, knowing full well I was gathering fragments for this poetic blog post.
Because that's what poets do. While other people punch time clocks, stand in factory lines, or sit at desks crunching numbers for eight or nine hours, poets sit in sunny chairs near French doors to do their work. This habit of being may not seem like labor to non-poets, but it can be tough and draining at times.
After Mass, we celebrated a pretty normal Christmas schedule. Went to my mom and dad's house to for brunch and presents with my two sisters--ham and rolls and cookies and other goodies. Then we opened presents, youngest to oldest. I received two books (a copy of Billy Collins's latest collection Water, Water and The Best American Poetry of 2024) and a new fountain pen (both of my current pens are pretty beat up). My Secret Santa turned out to be my daughter's significant other.
Then we returned home to open more gifts. I got my wife a new Emmet Otter felted ornament--this time Chuck the stoat created by my artist friend Jody:
For my daughter, a felted fairy, also created by my artist friend Jody:
And my son got an objet d'art, as well, by another local artist--a beautiful, painted raccoon skull with an amethyst crystal in its jaws:
My wife and I purchased all of these gifts at a local gallery. We decided to support local artists instead of contributing to the Walmart and Amazon MAGA billionaires of the world. And everyone loved what they received. To quote my son when he opened his present, "That is sick!" (I'm assuming that's a good thing.)
Even my puppy got some treats and toys today:
So, it was a good day, with a couple long walks in the cold, clear day and evening for good measure. We didn't go overboard or overbudget with any holiday thing this year. We chose sanity instead of extravagance.
You may be wondering if the blue mood I've been writing about since Thanksgiving has lightened or disappeared. It hasn't. However, I thought my disciples might need a break from my onslaught of dark meditations.
I did think quite a bit about the empty chairs at the Christmas table this year. Thought about my friend, Helen, who always put so much creativity and thought into her gifts. Thought, also, about my friend, Sally Z., who was one of my biggest cheerleaders the entire 25-plus years I knew her. I miss them all terribly tonight.
The other thing that poets do is examine their inner lives--cataloguing and anatomizing emotional and spiritual crises. If you haven't noticed, I've been doing that quite a bit these last five or so weeks. I guess it's a kind of therapy for me, instead of keeping everything bottled up inside. I even wrote my annual Christmas essay about my current state of mind and soul (it is included below).
Being a poet has saved my life on many occasions, reminding me--even in the well of despair--that I'm surrounded by beauty and grace all day, every day.
Saint Marty wishes all his disciples a blessed Christmas.
Blue Christmas
by: Martin Achatz
“All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.”
--- Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being
1. Mom held off until Thanksgiving Day. Left up to me, our Christmas tree would have been assembled, decorated, lit at the first taste of winter in the air, which, since we lived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, usually happened about mid-September. However, it wasn’t until our windows fogged with turkey steam and potatoes were boiling on the stove that Mom would allow ornament boxes to be dragged in from the garage and Bing Crosby to croon “White Christmas” from the stereo.
2. Being the youngest of nine kids, I existed on a yuletide spectrum, from an older brother who was one bullet away from being Flannery O’Connor’s Misfit around the holidays—ready to shoot anybody in the chest who touched him with a “Merry Christmas”—to myself, who slept with visions of sugarplums dancing in my head all year long. My other siblings fell somewhere between these polar extremes.
3. Eventually, living on my own, I freely indulged my Linus spirit. I listened to Christmas music all year long. If people came to visit, they often found my tree glowing like embers in the living room before the maples even started turning shades of pumpkin, mustard, and ruby. I put my toddler daughter down for her naps with Frosty the Snowman playing on the TV, and I sang “Silver and Gold” to my infant son while giving him baths.
4. Christmas is grace, sustaining me through some of my darkest moments, when the very idea of happiness or joy seemed as distant as the ice volcanoes of Pluto.
5. Since I was a teenager, I’ve experienced what I call “blue funks”—extended periods of sadness bordering on despondency. They’re not triggered by any one thing—not lack of sunlight or chocolate, not loss of job or car keys. They just show up on my front step, suitcase in hand, move into the guest bedroom, and set up shop. I’m never sure how long the visits will last. Sometimes a day or two, other times weeks or months.
6. Blue is one of the rarest colors in the natural world. There are pink flamingos and orange monarchs. Dandelions like scraps of fallen stars in fields of green. However, blue is more complex, dependent on cell structure and the bounce of light. If you see a blue butterfly flitting in a tree or a bluebird chasing a nuthatch away from a feeder, their hue is the result of sun reflecting off the tiniest building blocks of their bodies or wings.
7. In short, blue depends upon light.
8. In her book Bluets, writer Maggie Nelson writes, “It calms me to think of blue as the color of death. I have long imagined death’s approach as the swell of a wave—a towering wall of blue . . . If you are in love with red then you slit or shoot. If you are in love with blue you fill your pouch with stones good for sucking and head down to the river. Any river will do.”
9. This Christmas, I’m blue. That doesn’t mean I’m going to shiver into sapphire glory like a peacock or that I’m suffering from cyanosis. It means that a blue funk is sleeping in my guest bedroom this holiday season.
10. About 2 a.m. the night of Thanksgiving, I could feel myself getting sad for no apparent reason. It just happened, like some kind of cerulean weather front moving in. I couldn't fight it off. Suddenly, I was crying uncontrollably. Not just sniffing and wiping my eyes, but big, gulping sobs that I was afraid would wake the entire house. It continued until I finally fell asleep, despondent and exhausted. When I woke, my eyes were rimmed with blue circles.
11. I mask my blue struggles really well, perhaps out of some stupid stereotype that a "real" man needs to be strong all the time. Usually, only those closest to me know when I'm in the throes of one of my blue periods. It's harder for me to concentrate and be around large groups of people. At night, I withdraw, become uncommunicative or short-tempered. I don't even want to be around me.
12. Every famous Christmas movie or book or TV special is about family and togetherness, taking care of the less fortunate, angels getting their wings, Ralphie receiving his official Red Ryder, carbine-action, two-hundred-shot, range model air rifle, with a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time.
13. To paraphrase Charles Dickens, at this time of the rolling year, want is keenly felt. So are grief and hunger and isolation. I've been thinking a great deal about my ghosts of Christmases past. As I sit on my couch typing this essay, I can feel them reading every word on my laptop screen with their steady, blue gazes.
14. In the last ten years, losses have stacked up like cordwood in my life. A brother, two sisters, both parents, and one of my best friends. I go for long stretches without their spectral chains rattling in my ears. Other times, like now, they haunt the periphery of my vision like flocks of turquoise sparrows.
15. At night, when light is rarer than an albino moose, blue becomes something different. Dark. Almost black. The waters of Lake Superior become a vast sea of oily waves, and the sky deepens to pitch, as if you’re standing at the bottom of a deep mine shaft.
16. This morning, I watched the sun rise over Lake Superior. I do this frequently. In the spring and autumn, it's a glorious way to start a day. It allows light into the deepest corners of the heart. In winter, it's a different experience. Still beautiful, but coupled with a blue, aching cold.
17. The cobalt tarantula of Thailand glows like a moonlit ocean. Its venom causes muscles to seize and swell.
18. When I'm in one of my blue funks, the tiniest of kindnesses (a word of encouragement, a hug, a smile) is like seeing the brush strokes of van Gogh’s The Starry Night up close. Joy and grief layered so thick the eyes seize and swell.
19. Raynaud’s phenomenon makes fingers and toes turn blue due to constricted blood vessels caused by cold and stress. It’s a common symptom of lupus.
20. Flannery O’Connor died at the age of 39 from lupus complications. In a last letter to a friend six days prior to her death, she scribbled, “Cowards can be just as vicious as those who declare themselves—more so.”
21. I declare my blueness this Christmas season—decorate my front porch with blue lights, blue garland, a blue wreath.
22. My therapist says that blueness can be good—a time of tilling and plowing and planting. Of harvesting bushels of plums that sit in trees like sweet bruises, waiting to be eaten.
23. Blue tears: when the ocean appears to weep blue light, caused by microscopic bioluminescent organisms that glow when agitated by waves or swimming.
24. The Eastern Orthodox Church’s Advent wreath consists of six candles, each a different color. On the second Sunday, a blue candle is lit, representing hope.
25. Tonight, sitting in my dark living room, I am a blue candle—flickering, guttering—tarantulas of light climbing the walls and ceiling. When sleep comes, I dream of walking on a Pacific of blue tears, my toes sparking with sadness.
