Billy Collins Marginalia

The title of a poem sets a path for the context to follow, it creates expectations for the reader and usually foreshadows particular events likely to come. Billy Collins’ Marginalia is no different, in that it exposes the reader to what the rest of the poem has to offer. The term marginalia is defined as marginal notes or notes in the margin of a book, manuscript, or letter. The word Marginalia is traced back to the Latin forms margin- and margo, meaning "margin." Just by the title alone, the readers can make multiple predictions of this poem and what the author may be trying to convey. The different forms of marginalia are as extensive as the users who create them. Marginalia can be interpreted through comments, critiques, scribbles, annotations,

statements, or even doodles, giving both positive and negative reactions of the reader.
Collins introduces the different types of marginalia by describing how different each form can be.

For example, the first stanza describes how some annotations are so critical of the work being read through words like ‘ferocious’ and rage,’ and how the reader critiques the author of his/her argument. He uses phrases like “If I could just get my hands on you” and “beat some logic into your head," exaggerating the interaction between reader and author by extending the analogy of the critique as a physical threat. Collins describes other comments that are more dismissive as lighter marginalia that contrast the harsher ones, displaying the variation of different types of notes a reader may have. Not only does he show the different forms or marginalia, but how different users can affect the type of

marginalia.
In the next two stanzas, Collins describes the variation of marginalia is different cohort groups, such as high school and college students.

He describes the high schoolers as less enthusiastic in their marginalia and how they seem to be just copying down what their teacher says, showing no true thought or opinion in their notes. He mentions how one notes the presence of ‘Irony’ fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal, referring to the 18th century satirist, Johnathon Swift. This is both humorous and valid in that the reader is merely stating the themes of the text, not what he/she truly thinks. Collins contrasts the unenthusiastic readers with more eager learning students through an extended sports analogy for their marginalia. He states, “Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers, hands cupper around their mouths. ‘Absolutely,’ they shout to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin. ‘Yes.’ ‘Bull’s-eye.’ ‘My man!’ Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points rain down along the sidelines.” This is one way to describe the students as fans shouting support of their favorite authors, by mentioning Duns Scotus, a philosopher, and James Baldwin, an African American novelist. He uses the sports analogy as a way of incorporating the love of poetry and different authors, similar in a way fans love and support their favorite football players or

teams.
Collins incorporates the importance of marginalia and truly expressing personal emotions and thoughts in context by stating, “we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages; we pressed a through the wayside, planted an impression along the verge.” This describes the active readers who engage the works with their own thoughts and views, not just stating the bare minimum or literary devices. He mentions the history of marginalia, back in the 1440’s when Irish monks jotted alongside the Gospel of their pains of copying, before the invention of the printing press. Collins uses words like ‘scriptoria’ that describe the places of writing, these are the rooms in monasteries where monks copied the bible. This gives the reader background information and the level of importance marginalia can have, tracing back to the biblical times.
Not only does Collins describe the different forms of marginalia, the variation of users, and the importance of it but he also includes his personal experiences throughout this poem to show the thoughtfulness of marginalia, stopping to reflect on other reader’s comments. For instance, he ends the poem with a description of a marginal note that the speaker remembers in the book, Catcher in the Rye, that he once read in a library. Collins describes his findings through a simile, “the one that dangles from me like a locket,” almost as if it was valuable treasure. The last stanza states, “A few greasy looking smears and next to them, written in soft pencil- by a beautiful girl, I could tell, whom I would never meet- ‘Pardon the egg salad stains, but I’m in love.” These final lines show’s Collins imaging the note writer, in this case the beautiful girl, leaving her message after becoming so captivated with the novel that she drops her egg salad on the book. This represents the love for reading in one fine memory and the meaning one marginal note has behind it.