Let me start by saying: I KNOW ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT POETRY! In grad school I intentionally steered clear of any class that had to analyze poetry in any aspect. It’s not that I was afraid of the work; it was more that the work overwhelmed me. How does one exactly go about analyzing the thoughts of a person when the words are directed at allusions and people and places and times that the reader may have little to no knowledge of?

Years have passed since my chickening out, and I have decided to give poetry another try. I mean, who really cares how I interpret a poem? I’m the reader, right?

Before reading NINE HORSES, I had never heard of Billy Collins before. This saddens me. To me, this void in my literary reading experience denotes that there is much I still have to learn about literature, about the written word in general. (And I’m willing to bet that I’m not alone in this, am I?) So I read Collins’ book of poems in five different sittings and tried to make mental notes of some of the imagery he evokes through his words. Before long, I had lost most these images. It wasn’t that his word-paintings were vague or uninspired or cliché, they weren’t. What I think happened was this: Collins doesn’t try to bombard the reader with heavy allusions that don’t make sense or supplant esoteric verses that require not only a Ph.D. in poetry, but a Ph.D. in life. His writing is simple, but simple in a profound way—if that makes any sense. He uses examples and details that most readers will be able to relate, if not actually feel his experiences because they have felt them too. I sound like a teenager gushing over a first date, I hope s/he calls me!! But this is my proof of what a remarkable writer Billy Collins is. I don’t know how good he is. I don’t even know if I can compare him to anyone. Like I said, I know absolutely nothing about poetry. But I do know that his poems invigorated me, made me think, and energized a latent spirit within that wants more.

Perhaps this is all a phase and I will awaken tomorrow and think nothing of Billy Collins and his book of poems as I eat breakfast with my wife and children. But then again, perhaps I will share with them what I read tonight.

Here are a few of my favorite poems in the book:

Tipping Point

At home, the jazz station plays all day,
so sometimes it becomes indistinct,
like the sound of rain,
birds in the background, the surf of traffic.

But today I heard a voice announce
that Eric Dolphy, 36 when he died,
has now been dead for 36 years.

I wonder—
did anyone sense something
when another Eric Dolphy lifetime
was added to the span of life,

when we all took another
full dolphy step forward in time,
flipped over the Eric Dolphy yardstick once again?

It would have been so subtle—
like the sensation you might feel
as you passed through the moment

at the exact center in your life
or as you crossed the equator at night in a boat.

I never gave it another thought,
but could that have been the little shift
I sensed a while ago
as I walked down in the rain to get the mail?


NO TIME

In a rush this weekday morning,
I tap the horn as I speed past the cemetery
where my parents are buried
side by side under a smooth slab of granite.

Then, all day long, I think of him rising up
to give me that look
of knowing disapproval
while my mother calmly tells him to lie back down.

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I think this is really good stuff. But who am I to say?

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