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Seattle Arts & Lectures: Poet Billy Collins
Mon, May. 23rd, 2011 03:35 pmGot together last night with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
varina8 to go see poet Billy Collins read and speak at Benaroya Hall. I've been a fan of Collins' work for years and have been looking forward to this evening.
Collins read a number of poems, both old and new, including a favorite that was one of the first, if not the first, of his works that I ever read. It occurred to me, listening to Collins read, that it was a little like going to see a favorite band and hearing a song you particularly love. It was odd, though, because I'm unused to experiencing poetry in community, and other people respond to things differently than I do when I'm alone with a poem. What others find funny, I may find poignant and vice versa. Something else occurred to me, which is that, at the end of some poems, the audience gave a collective sigh, a sort of inarticulate "Oh, yeah, that's good." That's the response a poet wants under the best of circumstances.
After he read for a while, Collins sat down to answer questions. At one point he talked about themes in poetry and how often the theme is mortality. He said, "I tell my students that if you major in literature, you're majoring in death," which I thought was both funny and true. He also talked about the impact of the e-reader on poetry. "Poetry," he said, "is sculptural," which I wholeheartedly agree with. He talked about how part of a poem is how it is shaped on the page, how it interacts with the negative space, and that e-readers, by virtue of their ability to let the reader change type size and font, mess with that sculptural quality in ways poets never intended. E-readers make poems, he said, "blown out of shape." Lastly, he talked about his relationship with the reader, that the reader is always present in his mind when he writes: how will they hear what he's saying? How will they understand it? He said that usually he tries to keep other people out of his poems. "The fewer people you have in a poem," he said, "the more alone you can be with the reader." This last remark was resonant with me, given what I said above about experiencing poetry in community.
Collins read well and entertainingly. He was, as I recalled in an early LJ post, a little self-impressed, which I suppose he's earned given that he's one of the few people who can be described as both "bestselling" and a "poet" in the same sentence. But the evening was definitely worth the low ticket price, and the company was most excellent. I picked up a signed copy of Collins' latest collection, "Horoscopes for the Dead," which, a third through it as I am now, is proving more appealing to me than his previous collection. All in all, a fine evening.
varina8 to go see poet Billy Collins read and speak at Benaroya Hall. I've been a fan of Collins' work for years and have been looking forward to this evening. Collins read a number of poems, both old and new, including a favorite that was one of the first, if not the first, of his works that I ever read. It occurred to me, listening to Collins read, that it was a little like going to see a favorite band and hearing a song you particularly love. It was odd, though, because I'm unused to experiencing poetry in community, and other people respond to things differently than I do when I'm alone with a poem. What others find funny, I may find poignant and vice versa. Something else occurred to me, which is that, at the end of some poems, the audience gave a collective sigh, a sort of inarticulate "Oh, yeah, that's good." That's the response a poet wants under the best of circumstances.
After he read for a while, Collins sat down to answer questions. At one point he talked about themes in poetry and how often the theme is mortality. He said, "I tell my students that if you major in literature, you're majoring in death," which I thought was both funny and true. He also talked about the impact of the e-reader on poetry. "Poetry," he said, "is sculptural," which I wholeheartedly agree with. He talked about how part of a poem is how it is shaped on the page, how it interacts with the negative space, and that e-readers, by virtue of their ability to let the reader change type size and font, mess with that sculptural quality in ways poets never intended. E-readers make poems, he said, "blown out of shape." Lastly, he talked about his relationship with the reader, that the reader is always present in his mind when he writes: how will they hear what he's saying? How will they understand it? He said that usually he tries to keep other people out of his poems. "The fewer people you have in a poem," he said, "the more alone you can be with the reader." This last remark was resonant with me, given what I said above about experiencing poetry in community.
Collins read well and entertainingly. He was, as I recalled in an early LJ post, a little self-impressed, which I suppose he's earned given that he's one of the few people who can be described as both "bestselling" and a "poet" in the same sentence. But the evening was definitely worth the low ticket price, and the company was most excellent. I picked up a signed copy of Collins' latest collection, "Horoscopes for the Dead," which, a third through it as I am now, is proving more appealing to me than his previous collection. All in all, a fine evening.