I didn't think so. Anyway, he spoke and recited at the Midwest Literary Festival in Aurora, IL. Rock stars don't play Aurora. I mean, that's where Wayne and Garth were supposed to be from. I'll look into some of those other poets.
Sailing Alone Around the Room is a much better collection. Some standouts: "I Chop Some Parsley While Listening To Art Blakey's Version Of 'Three Blind Mice'" "Nostalgia" "Marginalia" "Victoria's Secret" I'm not sure what book it's in, but his poem "Introduction to Poetry" is great too.
Not positive, but I am pretty sure your talking about 'Picnic, Lightning' Any reason why you think Collins thinks of himself as a rock star? Anybody I know who have met him speak pretty highly of him...not just as a poet but as a guy as well. I think he gets a bad rep from some in the poetry circle because he has found some acclaim outside of coffee shops and university circles. The fact that some non-typical poetry readers are reading poetry rubs some the wrong way. Not saying that is you Imposter, just seems to be the whole 'Its cooler if it isn't cool' crap. Nine Horses, was a huge disappointment. Another poet I have gotten into lately is Jeffrey McDaniel The Benjamin Franklin of Monogamy Reminiscing in the drizzle of Portland, I notice the ring that's landed on your finger, a massive insect of glitter, a chandelier shining at the end of a long tunnel. Thirteen years ago, you hid the hurt in your voice under a blanket and said there's two kinds of women—those you write poems about and those you don't. It's true. I never brought you a bouquet of sonnets, or served you haiku in bed. My idea of courtship was tapping Jane's Addiction lyrics in Morse code on your window at three A.M., whiskey doing push-ups on my breath. But I worked within the confines of my character, cast as the bad boy in your life, the Magellan of your dark side. We don't have a past so much as a bunch of electricity and liquor, power never put to good use. What we had together makes it sound like a virus, as if we caught one another like colds, and desire was merely a symptom that could be treated with soup and lots of sex. Gliding beside you now, I feel like the Benjamin Franklin of monogamy, as if I invented it, but I'm still not immune to your waterfall scent, still haven't developed antibodies for your smile. I don't know how long regret existed before humans stuck a word on it. I don't know how many paper towels it would take to wipe up the Pacific Ocean, or why the light of a candle being blown out travels faster than the luminescence of one that's just been lit, but I do know that all our huffing and puffing into each other's ears—as if the brain was a trick birthday candle—didn't make the silence any easier to navigate. I'm sorry all the kisses I scrawled on your neck were written in disappearing ink. Sometimes I thought of you so hard one of your legs would pop out of my ear hole, and when I was sleeping, you'd press your face against the porthole of my submarine. I'm sorry this poem has taken thirteen years to reach you. I wish that just once, instead of skidding off the shoulder blade's precipice and joyriding over flesh, we'd put our hands away like chocolate to be saved for later, and deciphered the calligraphy of each other's eyelashes, translated a paragraph from the volumes of what couldn't be said.
I'll add one by August Kleinzahler: Diablo: A Recipe (for W.S. Di Piero) Caro mio, the hot must dwell among the dark the orange habanero buring like a candle in a terra-cotta jar and the onion tuned, just so that when the mud commences to bubble, to streak and to spit, a barely audible sweetness is there too; but still, still that torrid little fist commands the temperate hand, the wooden spoon, the meats nothing will avail but patience, as in many things in love, say, or with a poem but in this the most of all for as the first of afternoon's late shadows fall and as I-95's muffled rumbling ebbs and flows in the distance, crossing the river beyond the big beech tree, its leaves flaring gold only now, after how many hours the meat and marrow slip from the bone the dark pasilla and chorizo show as currents in a muddy river show only a shade or two off but careful not to turn the lights on or all of it is lost for the broth and the room are now as one one fabric of shadow broken only by the blue flame of the burner turned very low and so, the moment has come for the first, the most important glass of wine a big red, why not a Merlot because only now, alone in this room dark and quiet as a chapel the garlic has slowly begun to bloom the the wine in the back of your throat will be made sonorous by it then it is time, after much stirring and some contemplation to find the appropriate tune perhaps one of Schuber's final sonatas and take up your spoon once more and for the first time taste how the ferocious one, the brute because of the lily has been seduced and burns still, indelibly but like the small blue flame in the darkened room
No, no, trust me, I fight against this same sentiment in music all the time. One thing I should say is that Collins has done an excellent job of providing accessible poetry to a wider audience, and ther is nothing better that a poet can do. And I really really do like some of his work. In any case, it's not the Collins hype that I mind, it's that he seems to have bought into the hype, at least some of the time. I'm told it's hit or miss with him. I've seen the misses twice. He'll swoop into a poetry festival or some such event, do his big marquee reading, swoop back out, hardly interact with anybody. Most poets I know are much more accommodating and friendly and genuinely excited to talk to people about poetry and writing and reading. I don't get this from Billy. Anyway, there certainly is a bit of a backlash, and I think that's unfortunate, but I also think that his personality has fed it a bit.
More Robert Hass, because sometimes I can't stop reading him. Happiness Because yesterday morning from the steamy window we saw a pair of red foxes across the creek eating the last windfall apples in the rain— they looked up at us with their green eyes long enough to symbolize the wakefulness of living things and then went back to eating— and because this morning when she went into the gazebo with her black pen and yellow pad to coax an inquisitive soul from what she thinks of as the reluctance of matter, I drove into town to drink tea in the café and write notes in a journal—mist rose from the bay like the luminous and indefinite aspect of intention, and a small flock of tundra swans for the second winter in a row was feeding on new grass in the soaked fields; they symbolize mystery, I suppose, they are also called whistling swans, are very white, and their eyes are black— and because the tea steamed in front of me, and the notebook, turned to a new page, was blank except for the faint idea of order, I wrote: happiness! It is December, very cold, we woke early this morning, and lay in bed kissing, our eyes squinched up like bats.
Saw this over at Atrios' blog and I thought I'd share it here: Sometimes things don’t go, after all, from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail, sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well. A people sometimes will step back from war; elect an honest man; decide they care enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor. Some men become what they were born for. Sometimes our best efforts do not go amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to. The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you. -- Sheenagh Pugh, “Sometimes”"
White Owl flies Into and Out of the Field, by Mary Oliver Coming down out of the freezing sky with its depths of light, like an angel, or a buddha with wings, it was beautiful and accurate, striking the snow and whatever was there with a force that left the imprint of thetips of its wings-- five feet apart--and the grabbing thrust of its feet, and the indentation of what had been running through the white valleys of the snow-- and then it rose, gracefully, and flew back to the frozen marshes, to lurk there, like a little lighthouse, in the blue shadows-- so I thought: maybe death isn't darkness, after all, but so much light wrapping itself around us-- as soft as feathers-- that we are instantly weary of looking, and looking, and shut our eyes, not without amazement, and let ourselves be carried, as through the translucence of mica, to the river that is without the least dapple or shadow-- that is nothing but light--scalding, aortal light-- in which we are washed and washed out of our bones.
Funny--I was just re-reading this poem the other night. His reading of it is a little too dour, I think (the line "the opera you hate most, the worst music ever invented" is kind of funny, which makes the poem's closing so hearbreaking), but I absolutely love this poem.
--- the poignancy of this poem is...savage! it is a merciless indictment of a certain sort of laziness, but the intensity of the love expressed by the narrator redeems the poem completely, IMO. i came upon this poem completely by accident, web-surf serependipity at its sweetest. i just sat in my office at work ( ha! ) tears pouring down my cheeks. i couldn't leave my office for 10 minutes
One of my favourite poems-Elegy written in a country churchyard by Thomas Gray, especially the final three stanzas. http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Poetry/Elegy.htm
Doctor, the Mary Oliver one you quoted stopped me dead in my tracks when I first read it a few months ago. One that's inserted itself into my soul is Wendell Berry's Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front. b.
--- because it's good! some of mcdaniels metaphors are astonishing! My idea of courtship was tapping Jane's Addiction lyrics in Morse code on your window at three A.M. to me this portrays in diamond clarity the writer's sense of his own frail absurdity. the only problem with the metaphor is that lots of readers don't know N'Sync from Jane's Addiction, but, hey, that's art, innit?
A Child Gone A crumbling sand castle, a rusty shovel, not the pail, these were swept away by the ever efficient tide, along with one half-buried red sneaker. That summer at Pratt island, shutters lightly banging on balmy nights, the first discovery of the skulking killer: hands that tremble as they fumble at laces, knees that shake as they climb the shiny slide. Vacant days, serene as swans, erase fragile details etched by clever, stubby fingers, by running feet, prints and smudges, memories merely loose photographs, the edge of a finger painting torn from the fridge, bright ribbons, a solitary toy under the empty bed. Like gray wolves circling dying embers, bright, ravenous eyes glinting with the taste for blood, the silent enemy stills muscle, locks nerve, penetrates fiber, twists an innocent smile. After the funeral, hazy, leaden words, You stand alone on the palisade, scan the horizon: are those white caps her kisses, is that soft cloud the curve of her jaw, is that breeze her last, sweet breath?
Images by Tyrone Green Dark and lonely on a summer's night. Kill my landlord. Kill my landlord. Watchdog barking. Do he bite? Kill my landlord. Kill my landlord. Slip in his window. Break his neck. Then his house I start to wreck. Got no reason. What the heck? Kill my landlord. Kill my landlord. C-I-L my land lord!
I don't know about Green as a poet. When writing in verse, his vision always struck me as rather limited, esp. compared to his reggae albums. I mean, in the poem you quote, it's just "kill my landlord," whereas his reggae song was much more expansive in scope: "kill all da white people / but buy my records first."
I don't know. I find his songs pale in comparison to the visceral power of the anonymous prisoner who penned the unforgettable: I'm gonna get me a shotgun and kill all the whities I see, I'm gonna get me a shotgun and kill all the whities I see. When I kill all the whities I see, then whitey he won't bother me, I'm gonna get me a shotgun and kill all the whities I see. Then I'll get a white woman who's wearing a navy blue sweater ...
Exactly. It's an image. And a pretty good one. I stretch the term metaphor all the time. It's less rigid than people think, but not so loose that it includes things that aren't metaphors at all.
--- applying the term metaphor too loosely ultimately does violence to the sense of what one is trying to say, i imagine. i was an Eng Lit major in school, with a creative writing emphasis, so i can usually find my way around these green hills. but thanks for pointing out the error.