Nine Horses by Billy Collins

Source of book: I own this.

This is another book of several that I credit my late cousin-in-law Jennifer for. Poetry lovers are rare these days, unfortunately, and I really miss our conversations about poetry over the years. Billy Collins was one of her favorites, so I dedicate this post to her memory. 

 

 

Billy Collins is a former poet laureate for the United States, and also for the State of New York. His style is contemporary yet somewhat traditional, with forms that approximate classic types, but with conversational language that is easy and accessible while remaining nuanced and indirect. 

I quite enjoyed this collection, from 2002. Nine Horses is the first of the books included in my hardback New and Selected Poems, and, as I often do, I start at the beginning. 

To start this post, I want to feature the opening poem to the larger book, addressed to the reader. 

Reader

Looker, gazer, skimmer, skipper,

thumb-licking page turner, peruser,

you getting your print-fix for the day,

pencil-chewer, note taker, marginalianist 

with your checks and X’s

first-timer or revisiter,

browser, speedster, English major,

flight-ready girl, melancholy boy,

invisible companion, thief, blind date, perfect stranger - 

that is me rushing to the window

to see if it’s you passing under the shade trees

with a baby carriage or a dog on a leash,

me picking up the phone 

to imagine your unimaginable number,

me standing by a map of the world

wondering where you are - 

alone on a bench in a train station 

or falling asleep, the book sliding to the floor.

Seriously, can anyone not want to read his poems after that? He is such an eager, friendly, hopeful writer, a bit “gee-shucks, I hope someone likes my poems” combined with genuine curiosity about who that reader might be. I love it. 

Next up is this poem, one that made me smile and think. 

Velocity

In the club car that morning I had my notebook

open on my lap and my pen uncapped,

looking every inch the writer

right down to the little writer’s frown on my face,

but there was nothing to write about

except life and death

and the low warning sound of the train whistle.

I did not want to write about the scenery 

that was flashing past, cows spread over a pasture,

hay rolled up meticulously - 

things you see once and will never see again.

But I kept my pen moving by drawing

over and over again

the face of a motorcyclist in profile -

for no other reason I can think of -

a biker with sunglasses and a weak chin,

leaning forward, helmetless,

his long thin hair trailing behind him in the wind.

I also drew many lines to indicate speed,

to show the air becoming visible

as it broke over the biker’s face

the way it was breaking over the face

of the locomotive that was pulling me

toward Omaha and whatever lay beyond Omaha

for me, all the other stops to make

Before the time would arrive to stop for good.

We must always look at things

from the point of eternity,

the college theologians used to insist,

from which, I imagine, we would all

appear to have speed lines trailing behind us

as we rush along the road of the world. 

as we rush down the long tunnel of time - 

the biker, of course, drunk on the wind,

but also the man reading by a fire,

speed lines coming off his shoulders and his book,

and the woman standing on a beach

studying the curve of horizon,

even the child asleep on a summer night,

speed lines flying from the posters of her bed,

from the white tips of the pillow cases,

and from the edges of her perfectly motionless body. 

That line about college theologians cracks me up. Oh yeah, I heard that a lot growing up, and whatever. Collins makes far more of an impression than any sermon, though, with the idea of those speed lines even from the motionless and the asleep. Great stuff. 

The Country

I wondered about you

when you told me never to leave

a box of strike-anywhere matches

lying around the house because the mice

might get into them and start a fire.

But your face was absolutely straight

when you twisted the lid down on the round tin

where the matches, you said, are always stowed. 

Who could sleep that night?

Who could whisk away the thought

of the one unlikely mouse

padding along on a cold water pipe

behind the floral wallpaper

gripping a single wooden match

between the needles of his teeth?

Who could not see him rounding a corner,

the blue tip scratching against a rough-hewn beam,

the sudden flare, and the creature

for one bright, shining moment

suddenly thrust ahead of his time -

now a fire-starter, now a torch-bearer

in a forgotten ritual, little brown druid

illuminating some ancient night.

Who could fail to notice,

lit up in the blazing insulation,

The tiny looks of wonderment on the faces

of his fellow mice, one-time inhabitants

of what once was your house in the country?

That one made me laugh too. What a picture! The little mouse-druids. 

Here is another one that I loved. 

Today

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 jam,

a day when the cool brick paths

and the garden sprouting tulips

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. 

I feel like Collins has the sense of wonder that children so often have, and adults so rarely have - although finding a fellow adult with the same tendencies is always a treat. Perhaps that is one reason Collins resonates with me. Here is another one with that sense. Can anyone else related to this experience?

Creatures

Hamlet noticed them in the shapes of clouds,

but I saw them in the furniture of childhood,

creatures trapped under surfaces of wood,

one submerged in a polished sideboard,

one frowning from a chair back,

another howling from my mother’s silent bureau,

locked in the grain of maple, frozen in oak. 

I would see these presences, too,

in a swirling pattern of wallpaper

or in the various greens of a porcelain lamp,

each looking so melancholy, so damned,

some peering out at me as if they knew

all the secrets of a secretive boy.

Many times I would be daydreaming

on the carpet and one would appear next to me,

the oversize nose, the hollow look.

So you will understand my reaction 

this morning at the beach 

when you opened your hand to show me

a stone you had picked up from the shoreline.

“Do you see the face?” you asked

as the cold surf circled our bare ankles.

“There’s the eye and the line of the mouth,

like it’s grimacing, like it’s in pain.” 

“Well, maybe that’s because it has a fissure

running down the length of its forehead

not to mention a kind of twisted beak,” I said,

taking the thing from you and flinging it out 

over the sparkle of blue waves

so it could live out its freakish existence

on the dark bottom of the sea

and stop bothering innocent beach-goers like us,

stop ruining everyone’s summer. 

Here is another one, this one about people like me who rush to look stuff up. As I said, Collins seems to share some traits with me, from the whimsy to the thirst for knowledge. Anyone else read the encyclopedia for fun? Or is that just me? 

The Literary Life

I woke up this morning, 

as the blues singers like to boast,

and the first thing to enter my mind,

as the dog was licking my face, was Coventry Patmore.

Who was Coventry Patmore?

I wondered, as I rose

and set out on my journey to the encyclopedia

passing some children and a bottle cap on the way.

Everything seemed more life-size than usual.

Light in the shape of windows

hung on the walls next to the paintings

of birds and horses, flowers and fish.

Coventry Patmore,

I’m coming to get you, I hissed,

as I entered the library like a man stepping 

into a freight elevator of science and wisdom.

How many things have I looked up

in a lifetime of looking things up?

I wondered, as I set the book on the piano

and began turning its large, weightless pages.

How would the world look

if all its things were neatly arranged

in alphabetical order? I wondered,

as I found the P section and began zeroing in. 

How long before I would forget Coventry Patmore’s 

dates and the title of his long poem

on the sanctity of married love?

I asked myself as I closed the door to that room

and stood for a moment in the kitchen,

taking in the silvery toaster, the bowl of lemons,

and the white cat, looking as if

he had just finished his autobiography. 

I’ll end with this one, on the nature of poetry itself. 

Poetry

Call it a field where the animals

who were forgotten by the Ark

come to graze under the evening clouds.

Or a cistern where the rain that fell

before history trickles over a concrete lip.

However you see it,

this is no place to set up

the three-legged easel of realism

or make a reader climb

over the many fences of a plot.

Let the portly novelist

with his noisy typewriter 

describe the city where Francine was born,

how Albert read the paper on the train,

how curtains were blowing in the bedroom.

Let the playwright with her torn cardigan

and a dog curled on the rug

move the characters

from the wings to the stage

to face the many-eyed darkness of the house.

Poetry is no place for that.

We have enough to do

complaining about the price of tobacco,

passing the dripping ladle,

and singing songs to a bird in a cage.

We are busy doing nothing - 

and all we need for that is an afternoon,

a rowboat under a blue sky.

and maybe a man fishing from a stone bridge,

or, better still, nobody on that bridge at all. 

I look forward to reading the rest of the collection in the future.