The Trouble With Poetry - And Other Poems Quotes

“...the trouble with poetry is
that it encourages the writing of more poetry...
”
― Billy Collins, The Trouble With Poetry - And Other Poems

“I could feel the day offering itself to me,
and I wanted nothing more
than to be in the moment-but which moment?
Not that one, or that one, or that one,”
― Billy Collins, The Trouble With Poetry - And Other Poems

“This is not what it is like to be you,
I realized as a few of your magnificent clouds
flew over the rooftop.
It is just me thinking about being you.

And before I headed back down the hill,
I walked in a circle around your house,
making an invisible line
which you would have to cross before dark.”
― Billy Collins, The Trouble With Poetry - And Other Poems

“Just pour the tea, just look into the eye of the flower, just sing the song— one thing at a time and”
― Billy Collins, The Trouble With Poetry and Other Poems

“The birds are in their trees,
the toast is in the toaster,
and the poets are at their windows.

[...]

The proofreaders are playing the ping-pong
game of proofreading,
glancing back and forth from page to page,
the chefs are dicing celery and potatoes,
and the poets are at their windows
because it is their job for which
they are paid nothing every Friday afternoon.”
― Billy Collins, The Trouble With Poetry - And Other Poems

“And there is the silence of this morning
which I have broken with my pen…

— Billy Collins, from “Silence,” The Trouble With Poetry - And Other Poems. (Random House August 10, 2011) Originally published 2005.”
― Billy Collins, The Trouble With Poetry - And Other Poems

“On Not Finding You at Home

Usually you appear at the front door
when you hear my steps on the gravel,
but today the door was closed,
not a wisp of pale smoke from the chimney.

I peered into a window
but there was nothing but a table with a comb,
some yellow flowers in a glass of water
and dark shadows in the corners of the room.

I stood for a while under the big tree
and listened to the wind and the birds,
your wind and your birds,
your dark green woods beyong the clearing.

This is not what it is like to be you,
I realized after a few of your magnificent clouds
flew over the rooftop.
It is just me thinking about being you.

And before I headed back down the hill,
I walked in a circle around your house,
making an invisible line
which you would have to cross before dark.”
― Billy Collins, The Trouble With Poetry - And Other Poems

“Eastern Standard Time

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 Montreal to Bogota.

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.”
― Billy Collins, The Trouble With Poetry - And Other Poems

“I had to send away for the
beacuse they are not available in any store.

They look the same as any sunglasses
with a light tint and silvery frames,
but instead of filtering out the harmful
rays of the sun.

they filter out the harmful sight of you --”
― Billy Collins, The Trouble With Poetry - And Other Poems

“Building with Its Face Blown Off

How suddenly the private
is revealed in a bombed-out city,
how the blue and white striped wallpaper

of a second story bedroom is now
exposed to the lightly falling snow
as if the room had answered the explosion

wearing only its striped pajamas.
Some neighbors and soldiers
poke around in the rubble below

and stare up at the hanging staircase,
the portrait of a grandfather,
a door dangling from a single hinge.

And the bathroom looks almost embarrassed
by its uncovered ochre walls,
the twisted mess of its plumbing,

the sink sinking to its knees,
the ripped shower curtain,
the torn goldfish trailing bubbles.

It's like a dollhouse view
as if a child on its knees could reach in
and pick up the bureau, straighten a picture.

Or it might be a room on a stage
in a play with no characters,
no dialogue or audience,

no beginning, middle, and end–
just the broken furniture in the street,
a shoe among the cinder blocks,

a light snow still falling
on a distant steeple, and people
crossing a bridge that still stands.

And beyong that–crows in a tree,
the statue of a leader on a horse,
and clouds that look like smoke,

and even farther on, in another country
on a blanket under a shade tree,
a man pouring wine into two glasses

and a woman sliding out
the wooden pegs of a wicker hamper
filled with bread, cheese, and several kinds of olives.”
― Billy Collins, The Trouble With Poetry - And Other Poems

“Theme

It's a sunny weekday in early May
and after a ham sandwich
and a cold bottle of beer on the brick terrace,

I am consumed by the wish
to add something
to one of the ancient themes–

youth dancing with his eyes closed,
for example,
in the shadows of corruption and death,

or the rise and fall of illustrious men
strapped to the turning
wheel of mischance and disaster.

There is a slight breeze,
just enough to bend
the yellow tulips on their stems,

but that hardly helps me
echo the longing for immortality
despite the roaring juggernaut of time,

or the painful motif
of Nature's cyclial return
versus man's blind rush to the grave.

I could loosen my shirt
and lie down in the soft grass,
sweet now after its first cutting,

but that would not produce
a record of the pursuit
of the moth of eternal beauty

or the despondency that attends
the eventual dribble
of the once gurgling fountain of creativity.

So, as far as great topics go,
that seems to leave only
the fall from exuberant maturity

into sudden, headlong decline–
a subject that fills me with silence
and leaves me with no choice

but to spend the rest of the day
sniffing the jasmine vine
and surrendering to the ivory goverance

of the piano by picking out
with my index finger
the melody notes of "Easy to Love,"

a song in which Cole Porter expresses,
with put-on nonchalance,
the hopelessness of a love

brimming with desire
and a hunger for affection,
but met only and always with frosty disregard.”
― Billy Collins, The Trouble With Poetry - And Other Poems

“You, Reader

I wonder how you are going to feel
when you find out
that I wrote this instead of you,

that it was I who got up early
to sit in the itchen
and mention with a pen

the rain-soaked windows,
the ivy wallpaper,
and the goldfish circling in its bowl.

Go ahead and turn aside,
bite your lip and tear out the page,
but, listen– it was just a matter of time

before one of us happened
to notice the unlit candles
and the clock humming on the wall.

Plus, nothing happened that morning–
a song on the radio,
a car whistling along the road outside–

and I was only thinking
about the shakers of salt and pepper
that were standing side by side on a place mat.

I wondered if they had become friends
after all these years
or if they were still strangers to one another

like you and I
who manage to be known and unknown
to each other at the same time–

me at this table with a bowl of pears,
you leaning in a doorway somewhere
near some blue hydrageas, reading this.”
― Billy Collins, The Trouble With Poetry - And Other Poems