Sunday Author Appreciation: Billy Collins

I don't think I've ever dedicated a post to any particular author, but I feel I should.  Some people are just too awesome not to acknowledge, and one of those people happens to be a favorite poet of mine, Billy Collins.

My first taste of Collins' poetry came a  few years ago when my friend got me The Trouble with Poetry for my birthday, and I fell in love with the almost easy way he had with words.  Don't get me wrong; writing poetry is never a simple task.  The thing about poetry is that every word should matter; every phrase and the placement of each line can connote a particular meaning, which is why I think it's so hard to do, and I truly commend those who do it well.

What strikes me about Billy Collins' poetry, though, is the fact that it seems so easy.  It doesn't read like the kind of poetry that takes time to muddle through because you're trying to decode each line for meaning.  It doesn't seek abstraction but is content to merely observe the ordinary in a way that is accessible to all readers.  

And I think that is the brilliance of his writing.  It's almost luring you into a false sense of comfort.  You read his works and you admire the straightforward way he speaks about his surroundings or his observations of life.  Yet at the same time, if you reread it, there is something deeper to be found, some cleverly disguised emotion or hidden irony or humor that might not have been discovered upon first glance.  Or sometimes he foregoes the subtlety altogether and outright mocks an established convention, such as his blatant overuse of the word "suddenly" in his poem "Tension" (Ballistics, p. 55), in response to the theory that you should "never use the word suddenly just to create tension."

It's things like this that make me truly appreciate Collins' poetry.  His poems are meaningful, and they can certainly be irreverent, but they make you stop and think.  And they have a way of reminding you that not everything need be so complicated, nor taken so seriously.

Check out more about Billy Collins here.