Billy Collins

I had to miss class last Thursday due to the inclement weather, so I'm making up the quiz by doing this blog post. The poems we read and discussed were "Forgetfulness," "I Chop Some Parsley While Listening to Art Blakey's Version of "Three Blind Mice"", and "The Night House," all by Billy Collins. He writes about practical things that most people can relate to, whether they have experienced the situations firsthand or been close to someone who has. He describes simple things or even everyday happenings in an eloquently easy-to-understand way. These poems, most notably, would not make a very exciting movie. In fact, they wouldn't even make one scene of a movie very noteworthy. Still, the familiar becomes deep and satisfying under his words, and that makes Collins's work much easier to analyze.

"Forgetfulness"

This poem is obviously about the things that the mind loses over time. We can't retain everything we learn, everything we see, or every memory we would like to keep. It is just a fact of human life. That is the most simple way to put this poem, and it was pretty obvious when the reader just takes a glimpse of the title. After the second time I read through, though, I took it in a deeper way: nothing lasts forever, and Billy Collins wants us to know that. He talks of learning new things all the time, and with each one, losing another. We can't possibly keep all the skills we learn (like swimming or riding a bike), and it especially gets harder the older we get. It is not just about the mind in this situation, very obviously. Though this poem shows a slight bit of dwelling on the humanity of such things, it isn't all doom and gloom. In fact, it has much of the lightheartedness that Collins's poems often show in their conversational style. He uses imagery to create the story that isn't really there in the sense of a story line, but rather something you can see progress.

"I Chop Some Parsley While Listening To Art Blakey's Version of "Three Blind Mice""

Here, Collins takes a child's poem and makes it mean something while doing the simplest of everyday tasks. Much like his poetry, at first glance, it was just that - a daily activity while a man listens to music. With each of Collins's poems, you have to read more than once. The complexity certainly comes after the second or third time, and appreciation with the understanding. So after realizing just how deep in thought the speaker was, it became a story to tell. The man is a thinker, deep in thought to occupy his mind as he does his hand. He analyzes the song, making us realize that it's obviously not just a simple tune. This, again, is applied to his work: if we take it just like we see it, we completely miss the importance or the depth. One of Collins's quotes go as follows: "walk inside [a] poem’s room and feel the walls for a light switch." We don't have to analyze it to death! Just like that poetry scenario, in the poem, we accept the child's song like it is when we are young, but the man who is doing his adult chores has become a cynic and must search for the answers within.

"The Night House"

This poem proves to be one of Collins less lighthearted ones that I've ever read. Though it's read with a certain fluency, it obviously has a deep connotation the first time you go through it. Here, Collins attempts to personify the elements of the human experience. He does this by the day (when we are awake) and the night (when we are asleep), and he makes no mistake with what each part of humanity is doing. The heart is "restless," as always, being the emotional part of us. The mind is working even when the body is not, reading a book and staying awake. The conscience is perhaps the most telling, as it "roams from room to room in the dark, darting away from every mirror like a strange fish." Just like a conscience, who knows the body's every mistake, everything It tells us not to do, it refuses to see what it has allowed the body to do by looking into the mirror. And the soul stands on the roof, wild and free, always the part of us that cannot be contained. Again, Collins has shown us to the parts of ourselves that we can relate to - we know our body best, and though we are unique, our parts work in the same way that everyone else's does, and this poem seeks to connect us in that manner.