Everything Is A Poem.

For the past couple of days I have discussed a few of my reading habits and told you of some of my favorites in the areas of fiction and non-fiction. Tonight I want to say a few words about yet another kind of reading.
Poetry.

Any reader who omits or neglects poetry in their diet is going to be living a literary life that is malnourished. That is the long and short of it, and of course, it is also opinion.
However, I would be suspicious of any serious reader who said to me “I just cannot find any poetry that is worth reading.”
I would ask such a person only one question and it would be quick and direct. I would look them in the eye and I would say, “Really?”
Because I believe that there is poetry out there for everyone.
I would interrogate the person until they admitted that they do not LIKE poetry, but I would never let them off the hook with a claim that there isn’t any poetry worth reading!
There is!

Having said all of the above, I must confess that I am not in any way a poetry expert, nor do I even read that much of it. If I went for a literary checkup [and they say that around forty years old, every male ought to have one done]... I think the physician would probably say “Your fiction levels are OK, but you could really use more poetry.” I am writing of it tonight, as much to remind myself, as anyone reading.
In no real hierarchical order, here are some of my favorite poets:
Robert Browning, Thomas Hardy, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Shakespeare, William Butler Yeats, Rupert Brooke, Emily Dickinson.
There have been other poets that I have enjoyed, like Shelley, and Carl Sandburg, but really, I have not read enough of them. Name-dropping, because I have read a few poems.... that is not what I want to do here. But the above list of poets have really SPOKEN to me, in significant ways.
On my list of Things To Do Before I Die From Poetry-Malnutrition there are three names.
Robert Frost, William Stafford, and e.e. cummings.
These are three poets that I think have something to say to me, but whom I have not given the time to do so..... yet!
One of my goals is to read them.
OK, this has been all preamble.
Now I get to the name of a poet, a modern-day poet, that I want to unequivocably recommend to everyone out there.... especially anyone who says they have yet to find any sort of poetry worth reading. I have the answer for you!

Billy Collins.

Billy Collins was the American Poet Laureate for 2001-2003. The guy is simply amazing. I love his work, and reading him has revolutionized (no exaggeration) my own life as a fledgling poet. My own poetry output has benefited both quantitatively and qualitatively since I discovered Billy Collins. One of the main reasons is that Collins has taught me that everything is a poem.
More correctly, everything is a poem asking to be written.
If you don’t write it, it won’t be one. But if you do, it will.
There is a simplicity and a directness (as well as a direction) in his poetry that is very liberating. Collins writes in free verse. Usually the poems are quite short. Always understandable, in a pithy sort of way!
They are so simple that it is stunning. I have read his poems and then stared at my coffee cup, thinking “What a wonderful coffee cup this is.”
Perhaps that sounds a bit nutty.
Like, you could think “Have you considered that maybe you are nuts?”
Yes, I have considered this. Even sought the opinion of others.
But the coincidence (my nuttiness – my reading of Collins) is too frequent to be brought on by anything other than the sheer marveling over such exquisite use of language. Words so wonderfully arranged that they bring about a lovely sense of nuttiness, when read.
Collins was given to me. A gift.
My dear friend sent me the collection entitled Questions About Angels. I devoured it.
Then (I forget the order) I received, in the same manner, Nine Horses. Then Picnic, Lightning. Then, The Art of Drowning. Followed by The Apple That Astonished Paris. And finally, a copy of Sailing Around The Room SIGNED by the author himself on the page that holds my favorite Collins poem, Osso Buco.
All in all, it is the kind of stuff I would run back into a burning house to retrieve!
I have read, and re-read all of these, and I look forward to his next book of poems, due in the fall of ’05. The Trouble With Poetry and Other Poems.
I know that not all poets appeal to all readers. But I am so sure of Collins, that if you buy this book and do not like it, I will PERSONALLY refund your money!

I close my comments today with a random sample of what Collins does.

On Closing Anna Karenina

I must have started reading this monster
a decade before Tolstoy was born
but the vodka and the suicide are behind me now,
all the winter farms, ice-skating and horsemanship.

It consumed so many evenings and afternoons,
I thought a Russian official would appear
to slip a medal over my lowered head
when I reached the last page.

But I found there only the last word,
a useless looking thing, stalled there,
ending its sentence and the whole book at once.

With no more plot to nudge along and nothing
to unfold, it is the only word with no future.

It stares into space and chants its own name
as a traveler whose road has just vanished
might stare into the dark, vacant fields ahead,
knowing he cannot go forward, cannot go back.

-- Billy Collins –

Now, when you go to your own bookshelf (as I did) and turn to the last page of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina you find that the last word in the book is “it”.
IT!
So, re-reading the Collins poem with that in mind makes you realize that he has written something wonderful about the word “it”.
What better example can there be of the idea that everything is a poem.
....Asking to be written.