Billy Collins-Poet Extraordinaire

I have always considered myself to have a deaf ear when it came to poetry.  So when I first heard a Billy Collins poem read (By Garrison Keillor in The Writer's Almanac), I fell hook, line and sinker with the fervor that accompanies first love. 

And when I later heard Collins himself read his own poems, I understood what potency the perfect voice could bring to these words.

The Lanyard - Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

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That poem should resonate with all you mothers out there.  You know who you are.

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Billy Collins was the U.S. Poet Laureate from 2001-2003.  He is currently a Professor of English at Lehman College, City University of New York.

There is a wonderful C.D. of him reading some of his poems.

You can listen to downloaded readings from The Best Cigarette, or order the C.D. here (through Amazon). $12.00.  Well worth it.

And I am thinking that with blogging, I may be developing an appreciation for poetry as I read the beautiful things on others' sites.  That in itself would make all this worthwhile.

Comments

[Laura]

I too met Billy Collins on "The Writer's Almanac" one morning at 6:30 am, when it is aired here. (In fact, that show is what prompts me to get out of bed on many days!) Keillor's website is wonderful to relive all of the shows and to search poetry.

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/

Here's one from Tuesday, March 12, 2002. Enjoy.

Poem: "The History Teacher," by Billy Collins from Questions About Angels (University of Pittsburgh Press).

The History Teacher

Trying to protect his students' innocence
he told them the Ice Age was really just
the Chilly Age, a period of a million years
when everyone had to wear sweaters.

And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age,
named after the long driveways of the time.

The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more
than an outbreak of questions such as
"How far is it from here to Madrid?"
"What do you call the matador's hat?"

The War of the Roses took place in a garden,
and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom
on Japan.

The children would leave his classroom
for the playground to torment the weak
and the smart,
mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses,

while he gathered up his notes and walked home
past flower beds and white picket fences,
wondering if they would believe that soldiers
in the Boer War told long, rambling stories
designed to make the enemy nod off.