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Executive Times |
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2006 Book Reviews |
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The
Trouble with Poetry by Billy Collins |
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Rating: |
** |
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(Mildly Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Dull I’ve
enjoyed most of Billy Collins’ poems, and have appreciated his humor, and the
twists he finds in everyday life. Compared with his contemporaries, Collins is
accessible and avoids the contortions that more complex poets provide in
their writing. I opened Collins’ new collection, The
Trouble with Poetry, with a pleasant anticipation of what would be on
these pages. A few of these poems retain Collins’ humor, but most seemed
dull. I closed the collection with the memory of better, earlier Collins poems.
Here’s one of the new ones that I liked, all of the poem titled, “Eastern
Standard Time,” pp. 22-24: Poetry speaks to all people, it is
said, but here I would like to address only those in my own time zone, this proper slice of longitude that runs from pole to snowy pole down the globe through Oh, fellow inhabitants of this singular
band, sitting up in your many beds this
morning— the sun falling through the windows and casting a shadow on the sundial— consider those in other zones who cannot hear
these words. They are not slipping into a bathrobe
as we are, or following the smell of coffee in a timely fashion. Rather, they are at work already, leaning on copy machines, hammering nails into a house-frame. They are not swallowing a vitamin like
us; rather they are smoking a cigarette
under a half moon, even jumping around on a dance floor, or just now sliding under the covers, pulling down the little chains on their bed
lamps. But we are not like these others, for at this very moment on the face of
the earth, we are standing under a hot shower, or we are eating our breakfast, considered by people of all zones to be the most important meal of the day. Later, when the time is right, we might sit down with the boss, wash the car, or linger at a candle-lit
table, but now is the hour for pouring the
juice and flipping the eggs with one eye on the
toaster. So let us slice a banana and uncap the
jam, lift our brimming spoons of milk, and leave it to the others to lower a
flag or spin absurdly in a barber’s chair— those antipodal oddballs, always early or
late. Let us praise Sir Stanford Fleming, the Canadian genius who first scored with these lines the length of the spinning
earth. Let us move together through the rest
of this day passing in unison from light to shadow, coasting over the
crest of noon into the valley of the evening and then, holding hands, slip into the
deeper valley of night. Read The
Trouble with Poetry if you enjoy the accessibility and simplicity of
Billy Collins’ poems. Be alert to signs of dullness, and put the poems aside
for a few days, to try again. I look
forward to Collins’ next collection, and hope that his new dullness is
temporary. Steve Hopkins,
January 25, 2006 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the February 2006
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The
Trouble with Poetry.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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