Billy Collins' "Snow Day" and the Gift of Gab

Sandhill Cranes

It seems everyone wants me to like Billy Collins’ poetry, and for the most part, I do. I especially like what he and the other makers of “the poetry of accessibility” have done for the popularity of poetry. They’ve created a likable product; they’ve even made it sell.

However, when I’m asked if I like Collins, Sharon Olds, Tony Hoagland, and others, I find myself feeling guarded. I think that has much to do with long-ish narratives and the premium they place on humor and charm.

Many “accessible” poems take a long time to deliver their punch, if there’s any sock-'em at all to go with the charm. I’m likely to find more reward, more left hook, more dirt and scabs and tobacco-spit, in addition to more lily-like beauty, in a single line of Hopkins, Dickinson, Yeats, Frost, Bishop, and others.

Why should I not ask poets to try for that power-per-line or at least power-per-stanza? I suppose one answer is that charming, winking, “accessible,” inoffensive poems sell better. So poems are Barbie Dolls? Buicks? Surely that’s a poisonous argument to anyone who cares about the art of poetry. 

Here’s a season-appropriate Billy Collins poem that I don’t dislike—mostly because of the originality and keen perception of the dog that will “porpoise through the drifts.”  Also the radio’s being specifically “plastic” somehow plants me nicely in the poem’s suburban world, although farms and cities probably have plastic radios too.

Snow Day by Billy Collins : The Poetry Foundation

But I’d drop the first two stanzas entirely, along with some of the ten cute names for elementary schools. If ten is an OK number, why not seventeen?

I’d rather hear more about the meanness of the girls. Should it prepare me for grown women? Should it worry me, especially when evolutionists say the female does the selecting of a mate? 

And by the way, if all the schools are closed, which three girls are plotting? And where? Where is the speaker now, that he might move close enough to hear their words?

And how much does any of that have to do with a snow day? 

Many of Billy Collins’ poems are richer, more urgent than “Snow Day.” If you wish, consider his poem "Silence":  

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/39

I’ve picked "Snow Day" instead because it might illustrate why some poetry hardliners and old-timers are leery of populist poetry and the apparent argument that poetry might amount to little more than the gift of gab. I hope we all want poetry to sell and poets to prosper, but I also hope we prefer gems to synthetics, poems to fortune cookies. 

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Snow Day by Billy Collins : The Poetry Foundation

DANCING & BIRD PORN

Sandhill Crane: Waltzing, Drunk and Alone

There was some talk here last time about music and dancing. I’ve never trusted men who could dance. If I were about to hand over my fortune to a Wall Street type, I’d sooner trust men who succeed at the bar scene or church socials than men who are good dancers.

Back in the day I developed a restrained, classic, quasi-inert, sway-and-shuffle style of slow dancing, but that was go along to get along. Even then I found the whole activity absurd.

If dancing is foreplay for women—and several women have affirmed that it is . . . .  Actually they said, "What did you think it was, Dumb Ass?"  Interpretation: the male is required to forego his Randolph Scott dignity and fall into a foolish boogie-seizure while waiting for the female to get in touch with her animal self.

Downy Woodpecker: The Female Idly Snacks

Downy Woodpecker, Red-Head Male Fuels Himself

Am I the only one who’s stood in astonishment as women walk into a room with music and immediately start wiggling and wriggling, clapping hands and snapping fingers?  They lapse into exotic facial expressions, eyelids and brows squeezed into a pleasure-pain grimace, lips curled into an ecstatic-tragic oooohhhh. . . ?   I’d as soon learn French as indulge in such antics.

So. Dancing is foreplay for women—freeing up their bodies, feeling a rhythm, getting in a groove—while my limited, ever-ready gender is doing jumping jacks in a wheat field.

That’s all old news, of course, so we should not be, and maybe we no longer are, surprised that dating, courting, and mating make such a rough ride—rolling down Rt. 66 one minute—top down, wind blowing all friendly-like—and the next minute we’re flossing teeth or picking lint from lapels.

Munching, not breeding

How many hours do Mr. and Mrs. Sandhill Crane spend strolling and nibbling goodies in the grass, compared to the time they spend in outrageous lust? Sandhill Cranes look so lazy it’s a wonder they’re not extinct. I know, I know, their epic migration, oh, the heroic endurance, blah blah.  Some humans are dumb enough to run marathons, and most birds are dumb enough to chase a certain kind of bug for thousands of miles twice a year. Jesus, can't you just change your diet a little? Look at the sparrow. The sparrow will eat any damn thing.

Red-Tail  Chase

So Near, Yet So Far

One day last April Mr. Red-Tailed Hawk was howling for the Missus in a woods where I go to walk. I heard the high-pitched flute of Mister’s voice before I saw the two of them. Then I watched as he chased her for 20 minutes, waltzing on currents up there toward the sun, until, exhausted, they rested side by side on a high branch, transformed by fatigue to Platonism, to brother and sister. After a few minutes of catching their breath, they took off again, in another dance-chase across the sky, away and out of sight.  

That was a spectacular half-hour, but it left me once again wondering what animals are thinking and feeling. Most seem to be all about foreplay—eternal, spectacular rituals, displays and chases, fights with rivals—for a coupling that lasts about two seconds.

Love's Exhaustion

So. Are dancing and sex matters of the mind or the body? Is that one question or two? Or two thousand? Is it even a question? And in  
that transition from mind to body, where’s the tipping point? To understand, where should one begin?

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