Saturday, April 4, 2009

Billy Collins

Can we discuss this for a moment? Examine the apparent ease Billy Collins has in creating a short narrative like this. The poem is perfect. It tells the story, elaborates where necessary, doesn't overdo anything and manipulates the metaphor perfectly. And oh, what an ending!

My goal is to be like Billy Collins, in terms of ease in creation, or apparent ease at least, but I'd like to grapple with the topics that Billy hasn't, and I'd like to incorporate my own past, characters, etc. into the pieces. Collins has done a lot for poetry, both good and bad; I would like to succeed in my own right and help others, personally, to do well in their own creations of poetry. And I'd like to create works like this:

The Pencil
I held the pencil so lightly today
it fell from my hand
before I could write a thing

and it dropped to the floor
the way a cigarette
drops from the hand of a sleeper

so that the boarding house
which was to have been a poem
burned to the ground,

all the words dashing
into the snowy streets
in their flaming nightgowns.

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