Poetry X-rays, interview with Billy Collins

In this excerpt from a PBS radio interview, Billy Collins — U.S. Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003 — discusses his process of X-raying poems. (Read and listen to the entire interview at KPBS.org.)

INTERVIEWER: Where is the artistry in poetry? Is it the imagery, the cadence, the choice of subject?

COLLINS: Well, it’s sort of like doing six or seven things at a time. In prose, one just has to write sentences, one after the other. In poetry, you have to — you don’t have to write sentence, but I haven’t had a better way to express myself than the sentence, and lines at the same time. Because the line is the second unit or maybe the primary unit of poetry. So lines are delivered one at a time. So those are two things to think about. And even packaging the poem into stanzas is another consideration that is part of the craft of poetry.

INTERVIEWER: When you hold classes with students about poetry, you talk about X-raying a poem. I think we’re hearing a little bit of that right now. Can you explain a little bit more what that means?

COLLINS: Well, I think to X-ray a poem is really to find how it gets through itself. When I start a poem, I have an inkling of where the thing is going. I’m not completely in the dark, but I don’t know exactly where it’s going, and that curiosity is kind of what drives me to continue through the poem. And I think if we take a famous poem and we imagine that Keats has written four lines of it, but he doesn’t know what the fifth line is or any of the subsequent lines, then we have a sense that the art of poetry is really a matter of finding a path, an imaginative path which results in a conclusion or some kind of ending. So when I teach poetry, I try to not use the question what does this poem mean, so much as how does this poem continue, how does it commence and how does it keep going, and how does it stop?

Graphic: Poetry/Poem X-rays by Silver Birch Press

Simple Arithmetic, poem by Billy Collins

SIMPLE ARITHMETIC
by Billy Collins

I spend a little time every day
on a gray wooden dock
on the edge of a wide lake, thinly curtained by reeds.

And if there is nothing on my mind
but the motion of the wavelets
and the high shape-shifting of clouds,

I look out at the whole picture
and divide the scene into what was here
five hundred years ago and what was not.

Then I subtract all that was not here
and multiply everything that was by ten,
so when my calculations are complete,

all that remains is water and sky,
the dry sound of wind in the reeds,
and the sight of an unflappable heron on the shore.

All the houses are gone, and the boats
as well as the hedges and the walls,
the curving brick paths, and the distant siren.

The plane crossing the sky is no more
and the same goes for the swimming pools,
the furniture and the pastel umbrellas on the decks,

And the binoculars around my neck are also gone,
and so is the little painted dock itself–
according to my figuring–

and gone are my notebook and my pencil
and there I go, too,
erased by my own eraser and blown like shavings off the page.

Photo: ”Morning light on rock patterns, North Saskatchewan River, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada” From the postcard book: Sierra Club Nature in Close-Up. ©Ron Thomas,1988, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Find the 160-page book at Amazon here.

Morning, poem by Billy Collins

MORNING
Poem by Billy Collins

Why do we bother with the rest of of the day,
the swale of the afternoon,
the sudden dip into evening,
then night with his notorious perfumes,
his many-pointed stars?
This is the best –
throwing off the light covers,
feet on the cold floor,
and buzzing around the house on espresso – 
maybe a splash of water on the face,
a palmful of vitamins –
but mostly buzzing around the house on espresso,
dictionary and atlas open on the rug,
the typewriter waiting for the key of the head,
a cello on the radio,
and, if necessary, the windows – 
trees fifty, a hundred years old
out there,
heavy clouds on the way
and the lawn steaming like a horse
in the early morning.

*****
Billy Collins served as U.S. Poet Laureate from 2001-2003.

Illustration: “Blue Ridge Mountains,” watercolor by Ginette Callaway, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

Introduction to Poetry, poem by Billy Collins

INTRODUCTION TO POETRY
by Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
 
or press an ear against its hive.
 
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
 
or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
 
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.
 
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
 
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Poetry X-Rays, Interview with Billy Collins

In this excerpt from a PBS radio interview, Billy Collins — U.S. Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003 — discusses his process of X-raying poems. (Read and listen to the entire interview at KPBS.org.)

INTERVIEWER: Where is the artistry in poetry? Is it the imagery, the cadence, the choice of subject?

COLLINS: Well, it’s sort of like doing six or seven things at a time. In prose, one just has to write sentences, one after the other. In poetry, you have to — you don’t have to write sentence, but I haven’t had a better way to express myself than the sentence, and lines at the same time. Because the line is the second unit or maybe the primary unit of poetry. So lines are delivered one at a time. So those are two things to think about. And even packaging the poem into stanzas is another consideration that is part of the craft of poetry.

INTERVIEWER: When you hold classes with students about poetry, you talk about X-raying a poem. I think we’re hearing a little bit of that right now. Can you explain a little bit more what that means?

COLLINS: Well, I think to X-ray a poem is really to find how it gets through itself. When I start a poem, I have an inkling of where the thing is going. I’m not completely in the dark, but I don’t know exactly where it’s going, and that curiosity is kind of what drives me to continue through the poem. And I think if we take a famous poem and we imagine that Keats has written four lines of it, but he doesn’t know what the fifth line is or any of the subsequent lines, then we have a sense that the art of poetry is really a matter of finding a path, an imaginative path which results in a conclusion or some kind of ending. So when I teach poetry, I try to not use the question what does this poem mean, so much as how does this poem continue, how does it commence and how does it keep going, and how does it stop?

Graphic: Poetry/Poem X-rays by Silver Birch Press

Today, Poem by Billy Collins

TODAY

by BIlly Collins

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,

so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

 

that it made you want to throw

open all the windows in the house

 

and unlatch the door to the canary’s cage,

indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

 

a day when the cool brick paths

and the garden bursting with peonies

 

seemed so etched in sunlight

that you felt like taking

 

a hammer to the glass paperweight

on the living room end table,

 

releasing the inhabitants

from their snow-covered cottage

 

so they could walk out,

holding hands and squinting

 

into this larger dome of blue and white,

well, today is just that kind of day.

Photo by CT1967, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Billy Collins (born 1941) served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001-2003 and New York State poet from 2004-2006. He is a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York City, where he has taught for over forty years.

Simple Arithmetic, Poem by Billy Collins

SIMPLE ARITHMETIC

by Billy Collins

I spend a little time every day
on a gray wooden dock
on the edge of a wide lake, thinly curtained by reeds.

And if there is nothing on my mind
but the motion of the wavelets
and the high shape-shifting of clouds,

I look out at the whole picture
and divide the scene into what was here
five hundred years ago and what was not.

Then I subtract all that was not here
and multiply everything that was by ten,
so when my calculations are complete,

all that remains is water and sky,
the dry sound of wind in the reeds,
and the sight of an unflappable heron on the shore.

All the houses are gone, and the boats
as well as the hedges and the walls,
the curving brick paths, and the distant siren.

The plane crossing the sky is no more
and the same goes for the swimming pools,
the furniture and the pastel umbrellas on the decks,

And the binoculars around my neck are also gone,
and so is the little painted dock itself–
according to my figuring–

and gone are my notebook and my pencil
and there I go, too,
erased by my own eraser and blown like shavings off the page.

Photo: “Morning light on rock patterns, North Saskatchewan River, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada” From the postcard book: Sierra Club Nature in Close-Up. ©Ron Thomas,1988, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Find the 160-page book at Amazon here.

Morning, Poem by Billy Collins

MORNING

Poem by Billy Collins

Why do we bother with the rest of of the day,

the swale of the afternoon,

the sudden dip into evening,

then night with his notorious perfumes,

his many-pointed stars?

This is the best —

throwing off the light covers,

feet on the cold floor,

and buzzing around the house on espresso — 

maybe a splash of water on the face,

a palmful of vitamins —

but mostly buzzing around the house on espresso,

dictionary and atlas open on the rug,

the typewriter waiting for the key of the head,

a cello on the radio,

and, if necessary, the windows — 

trees fifty, a hundred years old

out there,

heavy clouds on the way

and the lawn steaming like a horse

in the early morning.

*****

Billy Collins served as U.S. Poet Laureate from 2001-2003.

*****

Photo: Holly Garner-Jackson, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Just Peachy

NEXT SUMMER
Poem by Joan Jobe Smith

The peaches turned out small this year—
no bigger than apricots.
No one wanted to eat them
one bite off each wasn’t worth it.
I picked them
left the ones on the tree
the butcher birds and meadowlarks
had bitten into, the ants crawling on them,
the funny-looking flies coveting them.
And I left the ones that had fallen onto
the ground, rotting now, because I
liked the way it made the backyard smell.
No one wanted to help me peel them
and slice them because it took
so much time—and I ate some
the ones with a worm on one side
the ones bruised on one side until
my teeth felt sweet and slick
and icy. I let them set overnight
and in the morning the nectar
buoyed the peaches like fat dumplings
in sauce; and I only added a little honey
to thin out the juice so that the peaches
would go farther. When
the crust had browned
and the cobbler removed from the oven
and cooled some in front of the open window
we all ate a bowlful although
it was almost suppertime
and we talked about the things we’ll do with them
next summer when the peaches are bigger.

Painting by June Marie. Find her work here.

Note: “Next Summer” originally appeared in The Wormwood Review:68 — an issue that also featured the work of Charles Bukowski and future U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins. The poem will appear in the upcoming Silver Birch Press release Charles Bukowski Epic Glottis: His Art, His Women (&me) by Joan Jobe Smith.