Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems Book

It is popular to state that Billy Collins, the People's Poet (hmn, I wonder if he has a Court?), is in decline these days. What do I know, this is only the second collection of his I have read, though I have read plenty of his work via the Internet (the People's Poetry Journal, if you will).

Turns out, this collection is almost a teenager--12 years old, copyright in 2005. Meaning? If the wheels were getting wobbly, it started much sooner than the "it is popular to state" folks admit. There's a Billy Collins style, surely. Casual. Approachable. Avuncular. Though broken into tercets or quatrains, his lines are often leggy as Rockettes, commas and dashes along the way but a long ways to a period. But no one will come out of his poems confused, which is why he is so appreciated, I think. Especially among the many who believe poetry is too obscure for its own good.

One of my favorite poems in the collection, for example, is of humble origins. It comes from the common experience of summer camp. It is called...

"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.

And then there are poems that, for me, fall a bit flat, especially the endings which are so crucial to the poem. One example is this one...

"Class Picture, 1954" (Billy Collins)

I am the third one
from the left in the third row.


The girl I have been in love with
since the 5th grade is just behind me
to the right, the one with the bangs.


The boy who pushes me down
in the playground
is the last one on the left in the top row.

And my friend Paul is the second one
in the second row, the one
with his collar sticking out, next to the teacher.

But that's not all'
if you look carefully you can see
our house in the background

with its porch and its brick chimney
and up in the clouds
you can see the faces of my parents,

and over there, off to the side,
Superman is balancing
a green car over his head with one hand.

Of course, you may see merit in the class picture as much as or more than in the lanyard. Poetry is a personal thing, notorious for its subjectivity if you are a reader. If you like it, heck with the vowel and buy a star or two from Vanna White, then go get the book.