Billy Collins And National Poetry Month

On NPR right now. . . if you live in the Seattle area. So good.

Billy Collins And National Poetry Month

Steve Scher
04/06/2011 at 9:00 a.m.

Former poet laureate Billy Collins has made an effort to make poetry more accessible to the masses. His humorous poems poke fun at everything, including himself. What do you like about poetry? Do you have any poems memorized? The poetry scene in the Pacific Northwest is incredibly diverse. Why is poetry important? We celebrate National Poetry Month with Billy Collins and KUOW's Elizabeth Austin. What's your favorite poem?

Related Event

Billy Collins will be reading tonight at Elliott Bay Book Company at 7:00 p.m.

Guest(s)

Billy Collins was the US poet laureate from 2001 to 2003. He is a distinguished professor of English at Lehman College, City University of New York, and is the senior distinguished fellow of the Winter Park Institute in Florida. His publications include "Nine Horses," "The Trouble with Poetry" and "The Art of Drowning and Pokerface." His latest book is "Horoscopes for the Dead."
Elizabeth Austen is debuting her poetry collection, "Every Dress A Decision." The collection is out this month from Blue Begonia Press. She's been KUOW's literary producer for the past decade, interviewing poets and introducing poems to public radio listeners. Each month she offers a journaling and poetry workshop for the staff at Seattle Children's Hospital, where she makes her living as a communications specialist.

--From KUOW website

Billy Collins at D.G. Wills

Billy Collins at D.G. Wills
Originally uploaded by LJMoo

Okay, this is totally random. I have a purse blog, And the Bag to Match, and I was looking up Dolce & Gabbana bags, but typed in D&G, and found this. I've seen Billy Collins twice, but from a back 40 bleacher seat in a high school gymnasium. I think this might have been a little more intimate!

Here's what this photographer has to say:

Billy Collins at D.G. Wills

Poetry Reading at D.G. Wills Books - La Jolla, CA - October 19, 2008

Here's an article in today's paper about how Dennis was able to talk Billy Collins into coming to the bookstore:
tinyurl.com/5sr87a

Artist's Way Journal - Week Ten, Day One

It doesn't seem possible.  But, as is happening with a friend who is doing this at the same time, we really are a week behind.  I still have Chapter Nine to do.  I wonder why it's so difficult, and why I procrastinate?  I think it is partly to do with the snippets of time I have, and don't have, and I fill those with more mindless things like Scavenger Hunt on Facebook.  (Oh, my! Another time sink.  But, I do like it.)

I need a poem.

Today, Robert is prompting us to :

Today starts our final week of this challenge. So, appropriately, I want you to write a hopeless or blues poem. We’re almost there, which is reason to celebrate, as well as reason to get the blues.

Sometimes I think this won't be too hard!  I'm shocked at the way the time has flown by this month.  (I just typed, and undid, "blown," but I'm thinking that that works just as well.)

Still need a poem.  DD had to read and analyse Billy Collins' poem "The History Teacher."  So, here it is, from Billy_Collins.com:  

http://www.billy-collins.com/2005/06/the_history_tea.html

The History Teacher - Billy Collins

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.

And now I need to go up and "nod off" too.

Artist's Way Journal - Week Six, Day Three

Feeling neutral today.  Actually, it was a day of getting caught up with bills and paperwork, tying up loose ends, some laundry, a big of housework.  Totally ran out of checks to pay bills with, so had to order more, and make transfers.  I swear, I can't seem to hold in my memory the things that need doing *when* they need doing.  It seems the more I hold in my thoughts, the more likely something else is spilling away.  Billy Collins said something about that in his poem, "Forgetfulness."  Now I'm distracted, and am going to go looking for the poem to post here.  I'll be back shortly.

Okay, here it is, and following that is a YouTube video to listen to, just so we don't forget.

Forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones. Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag, and even now as you memorize the order of the planets, something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps, the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay. Whatever it is you are struggling to remember, it is not poised on the tip of your tongue, not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen. It has floated away down a dark mythological river whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall, well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle. No wonder you rise in the middle of the night to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war. No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.  Billy Collins

That's how I am these days - so distract-able.  Or it is "distractible?"  Somehow I think it's the former.  I realise that if I didn't go back and correct all my typing errors this would look more like this:

...somehow I htink it's the bormer.  I realise that I didn't go balck and corrnt all my typing errors this would look more like thsi...

And I wasn't even the one on 2 am duty last night.  Tonight's my night.  Tomorrow is a busy day.  I teach Pilates, take a SilverSneakers workshop, and then teach weightlifting.  The DS has drums, DD and her friend go to church group, after which I need to sneak over to the theater and get a ticket for Rocky Horror for the friend.  They're seeing it Friday night.  

Brings back memories.  I first saw TRHPS (The Rocky Horror Picture Show) when I was thirteen.  The line wrapped around the block, and we finally got in sometime near midnight. We did this quite a few times, and each time it got harder and harder to hear the actual words. I bought a book, and the LP.  One night a few guys all gathered around a VW bug and lifted it up, then set it back down in the street.  

Later, on a trip to London, DA and I saw "Pirates of Penzance," and I met lead-pirate Tim Curry backstage, and got his autograph.  I was eighteen, and my London experience was great.  It was the height of the (post-)punk movement, and it was the year the Pink Floyd movie "The Wall" came out.  We saw it in the Queen's Theatre, or something like that. Then we continued on to Scotland, whereupon I came down with tonsillitis. (I still loved it, though, and seven years later returned with DH on our honeymoon.)

Tim Curry as the Pirate King

So, I'm off to read some more about God and money...  still trying wrap my head around that one.

--TKC