Skip to main contentBilly Collins is a companionable poet. Not for him the perishable novelties of postmodernist quote lifting (and attendant concerns with typeface) or the ephemeral taunts and tirades of slam. No, our most recent Poet Laureate, reading in Portland tonight, concentrates on the here and now of existence, and his poetry, inspired by diaristic musings on the moments that make up his life, has charmed legions. But Collins' "here" often feels uncomfortably like Dunthorpe, and his "now" is frequently idling on the couch.
I confess to only having read Collins whenever poems of his popped up in The Atlantic Monthly or The Paris Review, and so it was perhaps unwise to grind through the collected work over a long weekend to catch up. But I've cleared larger stacks of other writers' work that didn't exhaust me as profoundly as Collins. After the fifth swing in his hammock cheering on the march of clouds, or another invitation to soak with him in the tub upstairs, a bardic tedium takes hold.
Finding wonder in the prosaica of life is the hallmark of classical Chinese and Japanese poetry (work that Collins often references). The glint of light upon a vase, a dear wife's comb lying on the floor are images bespeaking beauty and life's brevity. Collins conjures a number of remarkable images, but one must slog through his rule-less, garrulous haikus to grasp them: "...the furled napkins, the evening wedding of the knife and fork" (from "Nine Horses"), "The three-legged easel of realism" (from "Poetry"), or "lobsters lying on the bottom of an illuminated tank which was filled with their copious tears" (from "More Than a Woman").
Collins' numerous attempts to communicate his enthusiasm for jazz are seldom jazzily rendered, seeming more beaten than Beat. Collins is also forever being compared to Robert Frost, which is mystifying. Other than a few walks in yellow woods and shoveling the odd pile of snow, the two Northeasterners couldn't diverge further. Frost craved transcendence, whereas Collins seems content in the cask of self. One begins to wonder whether his readership might suffer similar satisfaction.
But there is something endearing about a man who honks the horn whenever he passes the cemetery where his parents are buried or who finds a resemblance of Marianne Moore in a titmouse.
Collins' work has flashes of great humor ("Release the whippets of anxiety"), epigrammatic pithiness ("Laziness was the mother of astronomy") and humility. Collins' wish for us, his readers (whom he coyly addresses in prefaces to his various collections), is noble. In the winter of our disconnect, Collins wants us to embrace E.M. Forster's dictum to "only connect"--to each second, to each sound, to each "small box of Octobers" left to us. To "sit on pillows," as Collins would have it, "and observe the great China of life filing by and say whatever comes to mind." However, whatever comes to mind is not always captivating or elucidating. Perhaps Collins' fans are not so much interested in seeking a poet as they are someone intelligent to chat with in the hammock, as a sudden breeze slowly rocks them.
Portland Arts and Lectures at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, 227-2583. 7:30 pm Wednesday, Jan. 14. $15 (students, seniors)-$24.
Collins is the most recent Poet Laureate of the U.S., and, arguably, the most popular person chosen for that post. Tickets for Wednesday's lecture have been sold out for some time.
WWeek 2015