by Roberto Borgert
If you were in St.Johns Preparatory School at all last week it is very likely that you heard some talk of the famous Billy Collins. Sponsored by the LOGOS program, the prep school was able to bring one of the most well known and respected poets in the United States to our humble abode here in Collegeville, Minnesota. During Mr. Collins’ stay he spoke to the AP English class, at a Saint Johns University craft workshop and at a public poetry reading last Thursday night. I had the pleasure of attending not one, but all three of those events.
At first glance Billy Collins doesn’t seem like anyone special. His vaguely egg-shaped balding head coupled with the out-of-place grey hair definitely does not give the impression that he was once a U.S. Poet Laureate. Even when he begins to speak in that monotonous voice of his, someone who is not familiar with his work could easily think “Oh great, another dull, artsy, too-great-for-earth poet,” but as Mr. Collins continues speaking his unique sense of humor and personal charisma start to shine.
From all three events I attended (the AP class, College workshop, and public poetry reading) I really did not learn that much about writing poetry. One thing I did gain, though, was a new outlook on the differences between verse and prose. Billy Collins taught me that in prose the writer is forced to get meaning across in a sentence, while in verse the poet must portray his meaning in both lines and sentences. Five minutes into a Billy Collins lecture shows that he has a strong bias against prose and its usefulness (he is a poet after all). Another interesting trait of Billy Collins is that he is very frank about how poetry will always be beaten down to the ground by music or other media like video games or television. He says the reason for this is because music is immediate, that there is a surge of energy that lasts for the entire song. With poetry, however, the reader must take time to read the poem and let it marinate in his mind, which undoubtedly requires patience and a sense of appreciation for words (both are highly lacking in today’s culture).
I feel that what I learned from Collins cannot really be explained, so I’m just going to put forth some quotes I got from his lectures:
“If I had a bumper sticker it would say Revision is for sissies!”
“To major in English is to major in Death.”
“There is always the question of what a poet would do if he weren’t a poet. Charles Simic said that he had always wanted to open a small pastry shop across from an all Catholic girl’s school……..but that’s just Simic.”
“A carpenter goes to bed and the next morning he is still a carpenter. A poet goes to bed and might not wake up a poet.”
“I’m surprised by how quiet the political scene is on college campuses these days. I haven’t seen or heard of any protests. I hear knitting has become quiet popular.”
“Poets write in lines and sentences, novelists write in sentences…….just sentences.”
“There were a group of poets invited to the White House by Laura Bush; they refused saying it would be against their beliefs to meet with her. Didn’t they learn anything about guerilla warfare from the sixties!? They would have been in the White House! They could have done anything, worn a punchbowl on their heads or set off a stink bomb!”
As I finished putting down that last quote I remembered that Mr. Collins did say some things about writing. He said that the challenge of poetry is to make a reader care about what is going on with a poet’s internal self and that self expressive writing is completely over rated because, to put it frankly, no one cares. I enjoyed that train of thought immensely. The other lesson that Mr. Collins taught the AP English class is that there is no such thing as originality: originality is just imitation of several different poets and that the imitation and ingenuity of originality is driven by jealousy. Namely, the desire to take the style of someone else’s work, something that you wish you could do, and make it your own.
So I guess I did learn about writing. I’d rather remember the man behind the poetry though--he’s a funny guy.
“To major in English is to major in Death.”
“There is always the question of what a poet would do if he weren’t a poet. Charles Simic said that he had always wanted to open a small pastry shop across from an all Catholic girl’s school……..but that’s just Simic.”
“A carpenter goes to bed and the next morning he is still a carpenter. A poet goes to bed and might not wake up a poet.”
“I’m surprised by how quiet the political scene is on college campuses these days. I haven’t seen or heard of any protests. I hear knitting has become quiet popular.”
“Poets write in lines and sentences, novelists write in sentences…….just sentences.”
“There were a group of poets invited to the White House by Laura Bush; they refused saying it would be against their beliefs to meet with her. Didn’t they learn anything about guerilla warfare from the sixties!? They would have been in the White House! They could have done anything, worn a punchbowl on their heads or set off a stink bomb!”
As I finished putting down that last quote I remembered that Mr. Collins did say some things about writing. He said that the challenge of poetry is to make a reader care about what is going on with a poet’s internal self and that self expressive writing is completely over rated because, to put it frankly, no one cares. I enjoyed that train of thought immensely. The other lesson that Mr. Collins taught the AP English class is that there is no such thing as originality: originality is just imitation of several different poets and that the imitation and ingenuity of originality is driven by jealousy. Namely, the desire to take the style of someone else’s work, something that you wish you could do, and make it your own.
So I guess I did learn about writing. I’d rather remember the man behind the poetry though--he’s a funny guy.
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