Billy Collins's Poems

Marianne Moore’s infamous poem, “Poetry,” expresses her dislike of poems that are “so derivative as to become unintelligible” (Moore line 11). In other words, Moore dislikes poems with stereotypical subjects because these works become so abstract they cannot be understood. Moore’s poem also alludes to the misconception that people and writers believe that poems must be hard to understand in order to express thoughts, imagery, and experience. However, Billy Collins’s poems, Workshop, Morning, Snow Day, On Turning Ten, and The Art of Drowning incorporate Collins’s thoughts, imagery, and experience without torturing the reader with an unnecessary abstract riddle. Collin’s poems embody the theme: a poem is not required to have a high level of

abstractness; less is more and more is too much.
Workshop and The Art of Drowning are poems written by Billy Collins in which he transcribes his thoughts onto paper in a forthright manner.

In his poem Workshop, Collins analyzes a poem and records his thoughts. Collins bluntly states, “But then there’s the last stanza, my favorite./ This is where the poem wins me back,/ especially the lines spoken in the voice of the mouse./ I mean we’ve all seen these image in cartoons before,/ but I still love the details he uses” ( Collins line 54). Collins refrains from using abstract language and simply puts his original thoughts into a rhythmic pattern to create Workshop. Similar to Workshop, The Art of Drowning depicts Collins’s thoughts and questions about how “life flashes before your eyes”. In his poem Collins writes, “I wonder how it all got started, this business/ about seeing your life flash before your eyes/ while you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence,/ …How about a short animated film, a slide presentation? Your life expressed in an essay, or in one model photograph?” (Collins 1-11). In this poem, Collins expresses his thoughts on the way people experience “life flashing before their eyes” when put in a dire or life-threatening situation and questions how and why it started. Collins compiles his unique thoughts on this universal “phenomenon” into an understandable poem. Through Billy Collins’s Workshop and The Art of Drowning, he proves that poems can be written without a riddle to convey

thoughts.
Billy Collins describes two types of settings in his poems On Turning Ten and Snow Day. In his poem On Turning Ten, he depicts visuals at each stage of the aging process. “At four I was an Arabian wizard…At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince./ But now I am mostly at the window/ watching the late afternoon light/. Back then it never fell so solemnly/ against the side of my tree house,/ and my bicycle never leaned against the garage” (Collins 12). The imagery Collins provides is not for any abstract reason, it is solely used to help readers visualize the aging of a boy. In the poem Snow Day, Collins uses a plethora of imagery to portray a snow day. “The government buildings smothered,/ schools and libraries buried, the post office lost/ under the noiseless drift,/ the paths of trains softly blocked,/ the world fallen under this falling” (Collins 6). Collins determines that there is no need for abstract language in his use of imagery and explicitly describes two settings for the purpose of allowing his audience to engage in visualization.
Not only does Billy Collins express thoughts and imagery without the use of obscure language, but also conveys his experiences as well without unnecessary riddles.

In Collins’s poems Morning, he portrays his morning routine. “This is the best-/ throwing off the light covers,/ feet on the cold floor,/ and buzzing around the hour on espresso-/maybe a splash of water on the face,/ a palmful of vitamins-/ but mostly buzzing around the house on espresso” (Collins 5). Billy Collins’s purpose of this poem is to describe a typical morning. He has no intention of using abstract language in this poem because it would take away the focus of the topic of the poem: his typical morning. Collins also describe his experience growing up in his poem On Turning Ten. “ The whole idea of it makes me feel/ like I’m coming down with something,/ something worse than any stomach ache/ …This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,/ as I walk through the universe in my sneakers./ It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,/ time to turn the first big number” ( Collins 1-24). Collins uses this poem as a way to express the experience of growing up and the sadness that comes with it. There is no other hidden meaning, this poem is simply about growing up. Collins exclaims the morning and aging experience that one always goes through without using confusing concepts or

language.
Not every poem, must have a secret meaning or a riddle to be solved. Billy Collins proves that poems can simply be what the reader reads and there is no hidden message. By not using a high level of abstract language in his poems, Collins is able to keep the reader’s attention on his main idea. A poem that contains many confusing phrases and words distracts the reader from the main point of the poem and the poem then becomes “unintelligible”, as Marianne Moore would say. Through Billy Collins’s Workshop, Morning, Snow Day, On Turning Ten, and The Art of Drowning, Collins proves that less abstract language is beneficial to poems.