After a tedious day of working on postmortem requests on grant bits to placate the cranky grantors, with their fists still clenching the dough, I am literally blinded. Since I can't see clear to the end of a sentence, I take a break to listen to Billy Collins reading his poems live on Facebook—at least my ears can still see.
I come in late to the reading, as Billy finishes off The Invention of the Saxophone. The smoky voice of longing and loss, the porpoise cry of the subconscious grating the psyche. Then he reads from Best Cigarette. We're on a boozy roll. He says of the seduction of writing, the proverbial cigarette after sex. He says, When you're stuck, you light up. Then the words come. Followed by Pinup, the mechanic hammering on your exhaust pipe. The bottom of the ninth in the palm of your hands. And he ends with The End of the World. A real chaser.
Today surely feels like the end of the world, a spiteful Mercury retrograde on steroids. Errant horsemen and all that. Billy says, Best cigarette, last cigarette. I just ordered a passel of Billy's books on eBay, so now I can follow along. Aquel surprise, two books are signed. One to Bill. Who is Bill? Is he two-timing Billy? Is he a secret twin? What is the backstory, what reading, what town, what decade? Can I handcuff the books to a rusty pipe in a dark room and grill them? They smell of smoke from another time. The other book came from Copperfield's Books in Santa Rosa, by way of SecondSite, in Illinois. Long way around the horn, the post office being so crippled, it is what it is. Meanwhile, I try to follow along—playing catch-up as he reads a handful of poems from a stack of books.
Today's selection is from The Art of Drowning. Something I know well, one nostril above, the other below. It contains my first favorite poem, When I was Ten. Today, I am surely squinting for all I'm worth, snowblind from the proverbial page. But the page is made of electrodes gleaming in the dark, piercing the eye with small arrows. Billy closes the set with a bit of jazz—Our Love is Here to Stay. He says, George Gershwin wrote the melody, and then died. His brother Ira had to write the lyrics postmortem. I am bereft by that knowledge.
I feel like I'm a sequinned woman in black stilettos, trapped in an Edward Hopperesque painting, smoking a cigarette in solitude. A long drag igniting the eye of the dragon. Perhaps we're in a diner, or that motel room with the green armchair right off the highway in New Mexico at dusk. You can see Venus on the horizon. And the thing is, I have never smoked. But you can surely bet that the angels are playing for sax on the head of a pin in an empty room.
Today's selection is from The Art of Drowning. Something I know well, one nostril above, the other below. It contains my first favorite poem, When I was Ten. Today, I am surely squinting for all I'm worth, snowblind from the proverbial page. But the page is made of electrodes gleaming in the dark, piercing the eye with small arrows. Billy closes the set with a bit of jazz—Our Love is Here to Stay. He says, George Gershwin wrote the melody, and then died. His brother Ira had to write the lyrics postmortem. I am bereft by that knowledge.
I feel like I'm a sequinned woman in black stilettos, trapped in an Edward Hopperesque painting, smoking a cigarette in solitude. A long drag igniting the eye of the dragon. Perhaps we're in a diner, or that motel room with the green armchair right off the highway in New Mexico at dusk. You can see Venus on the horizon. And the thing is, I have never smoked. But you can surely bet that the angels are playing for sax on the head of a pin in an empty room.
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