Like a lot of folks, I sometimes really love poetry and sometimes I think it’s the worst of pretension. It’s a hard craft. When I read the poem “Litany,” by Billy Collins, in Harper’s Magazine, I could hardly believe it. It was just so good. He is making fun of another poet, but it’s one of those poems that you need to make it a couple stanzas into before you pick up what he’s putting down, because at first it sounds just awful.
↓ Transcript
Panel 1. TV is sitting at a cafe table with one espresso cup and a pad of paper, on a patio that overlooks some mountains.
TV (thinking): I am gonna be a poet.
Panel 2. TV has two more espresso cups in front of him.
TV (thinking): ...
Panel 3. TV sits with his paper at his side and a fist at what might be his temple. Lots of cups of espresso. The shadows are getting heavier.
Panel 4. TV is standing. Night has fallen. A waiter is picking up his many espresso cups.
TV (thinking): My friend told me I should try writing poems. I said, "But poetry makes no sense." She just nodded.
TV (thinking): I am gonna be a poet.
Panel 2. TV has two more espresso cups in front of him.
TV (thinking): ...
Panel 3. TV sits with his paper at his side and a fist at what might be his temple. Lots of cups of espresso. The shadows are getting heavier.
Panel 4. TV is standing. Night has fallen. A waiter is picking up his many espresso cups.
TV (thinking): My friend told me I should try writing poems. I said, "But poetry makes no sense." She just nodded.
WTF?? Hahaha!!
Pretty weird, right? I’m striving to be the eggplant of webcomics. You know… an acquired taste.
Is this poem entirely made up of references to other poems? Like for example This Is Just To Say by William Carlos Williams?
It’s funny, I’m picky yet uneducated about poetry and I really like Billy Collins. But we have a friend in common who has a masters degree in poetry who has told me that Collins is not his favorite. I wonder if he’s not really a poet’s poet.
No, Collins’s only reference is the quote he puts at the start. The rest he made up as a way of making fun of what he sees as off-putting and careless about the poet he quotes. The poet is a total nobody in the world of poetry, but Collins picked him out to make his point and this is definitely Collins’s most favorite poem.
I’m not surprised a lot of poets don’t like him. Hell, you’d not find any writer that all writers like: not even Shakespeare. So it’s fine. Collins takes aim pretty hostilely at the veins in poetry that he believes have driven people away from it. I think he’s fighting a hopeless fight, but, that aside, a lot of his problems with it come down to the over-intellectualization of poetry and the loss of fun.
I’m sure that rubs a lot of folks the wrong way, tho. I still dig his work, but I probably also like a lot of other people he’s not crazy about, so it’s a wash.
If you’re interested in more poetry, one of my favorites is Two Eyes Are You Sleeping.
Cool, I hope to hunt it down at some point. Poetry isn’t super high on my priority list, but I can admire it. I made it a goal a while back to try to at least read the annual “Best American Poetry” volume each year. Not that what they think of as “best” should necessarily be thought of as authoritative, but at least it’s curated and at least it keeps me paying some attention to the form.