Cabano 1

Kevin Cabano

Mr. Damaso

Honors English II, Period 2

3 May 2010

Billy Collins - Visual Wizard

―Picture yourself in a boat on a river / With tangerine trees and

marmalade skies / somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly /

A girl with kaleidoscope eyes‖

From ―Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds‖ by

The Beatles

Many forms of creative expression have an important focus on detail.

Human beings enjoy the stimulation of the brain and senses (often with a

multitude of images, thoughts, and feelings), which is something that creative

detail can deliver. For example, forms of artwork and literature such as

paintings, sculptures, music, poetry, et al. use vivid detail in the composition

to give a colorful (sometimes literally!) mental experience to the viewer. Many

painters and other visual artists often utilize color, shading, and depth, to

name a few, to create detailed pieces of art containing the most visual

information that can be fit into the painting. Songs use mood, texture, and

different instruments in conjunction with the lyrics to convey images and

feelings relating to the song, and poetry uses figurative language and

description to paint a picture in the reader’s mind.

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An example of a poet whose work paints a picture like this is American

poet Billy Collins. According to his biography on Poets.org, Billy Collins began

releasing his poetry in the 1970s, although his most praised and popular

works were published in the 1990s (par. 1). He was chosen as the Poet

Laureate for the United States in 2001 (par. 3) and also is in charge of a poetry

program for schools called Poetry 180 (par. 5). This essay will focus primarily

on three of Collins’s works: ―The Afterlife,‖ ―Marginalia,‖ and ―Thesaurus.‖ In

these poems, Billy Collins uses detail and figurative language to paint vivid

pictures of his poetry in the reader’s mind.

Collins is lucky in that he has gotten to enjoy his fame without becoming

―too famous,‖ that is, he doesn’t have paparazzi following him or constant,

annoying media attention. He has lived a fairly ordinary life punctuated with

the success of his poetry. According to the Poetry Foundation, Collins was born

in 1941 in New York, New York (par. 2). He received a BA from College of the

Holy Cross and then went on to achieve both an MA and a PhD from the

University of California-Riverside (par. 2). In 2001 he was selected Poet

Laureate of the United States, and he served until 2003 (par. 1). Since 1971,

Collins has been a professor of English at Lehman College of the City

University of New York. Additionally he is Sarah Lawrence College’s writer-in-

residence (par. 6).

Collins writes in a style that is rather laid-back and easy to read,

appealing to the average person as well as to avid poetry readers and fans (par.

1). A typical Billy Collins poem is written in a style very close to that of ordinary

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prose writing. Rhyme is nearly nonexistent in his works, and meter is never

consistent, and sometimes is not even present at all. In an interview with Grace

Cavalieri, producer and host of the radio show ―The Poet and the Poem,‖ Billy

Collins explains that he writes his poems directly to one single person, not to a

general audience (par. 73). A single, unknown person is in mind. Says Collins:

The poems I write are basically for one person. I don't know who

the person is, but I have an idea of speaking or whispering these

poems to one listener, and I hope I'm aiming for a very intimate

connection. (par. 73)

His poems’ subjects are generally ordinary, everyday things or situations in the

lives of people. Sometimes this is extremely literal. For example, one of Collins’s

poems is entitled ―I Chop Some Parsley While Listening to Art Blakey's Version

of 'Three Blind Mice.’‖ (―The Afterlife‖ 48). Talk about obvious! No hidden

meaning or analogy here! Right off the bat that poem tells you what it’s about.

Billy Collins describes his childhood as happy (―A Brisk Walk,‖ par. 2), and

perhaps this contributed to the fact that his poems are loose, carefree, and

rarely negative. The happy childhood could have influenced his life in making

him a person who is not pessimistic, and this is reflected in his poems.

Being born as early as he was and still being alive today, Billy Collins has

lived through a myriad of important times and events in our nation and world.

For example, Collins has been around every war since World War II (he was

born just months before the United States entered WWII in 1941). Any sort of

important national conflict, sporting event, artistic release, ANYTHING that has

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occurred since that time has been experienced by Billy Collins. He was there

for it all. Let’s take, for example, the time right after World War II had ended in

1945. For the past 15 years our nation had experienced economic depression

that was only fixed due to the total war of World War II that ensued nearly

immediately after its conclusion. When the war was finally over, the economy

began to boom. This can be partially attributed to the ―Baby Boom.‖ The

population growth caused by more births stimulated the economy because

demand for food, clothing, toys, and other child-related items shot up, causing

consumers to pour money into the economy (―Baby Boom,‖ par. 3). People were

happy again and the country was thriving. These good times after World War II

overlap directly with Billy Collins’s childhood – indeed, he did describe it as

happy, which connects as mentioned above.

Billy Collins uses detail and figurative language to paint vivid pictures of

his poems in the reader’s mind. His happy childhood is quite possibly a factor

in the laid-back, ordinary subject matter. Collins effectively uses this type of

subject as a canvas for him to paint these mental pictures upon.

Here I will analyze ―The Afterlife,‖ ―Marginalia,‖ and ―Thesaurus.‖ Each of

these poems exemplifies the earlier-mentioned usage of figurative language and

detail to create strong mental images in the reader’s mind. ―The Afterlife‖ is

about everyone going to the afterlife of their fantasies after death. ―Marginalia‖

and ―Thesaurus‖ deal with words: margin notes and words in a thesaurus,

respectively. Individuals from poetry organizations, magazines, programs, etc.

are common amongst Billy Collins’s literary critics.

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―The Afterlife‖ uses simile, metaphor, and vivid, picturesque imagery to

convey the images of the poem. A few examples:

Some are being shot up a funnel of flashing colors

Into a zone of light, white as January sun...

Some are being shot up a funnel of flashing colors

Into a zone of light, white as January sun. (―The Afterlife, lines 10-

11, 19-20)

Whatever the afterlife contains is something no one has ever seen, and

therefore Collins has to create the images himself to visualize the unknown.

These literary devices he uses are for the maximum descriptive effect. Another

example of Billy Collins giving imagery and descriptions to unconventional

things can be found in his poem ―Marginalia.‖

In ―Marginalia,‖ Billy Collins uses metaphor and personification to bring

life to something as mundane as notes the margins of books. Many of the

connections are quite unusual and interesting. These excerpts give some

examples of this:

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,

skirmishes against the author...

my thumb as a bookmark...

Students are more modest

needing to leave only their splayed footprints

along the shore of the page. (―Marginalia, lines 1-2, 13, 17-18)

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I personally find the lines about ―splayed footprints‖ really interesting. It uses

metaphor, relating the notes as ―footprints‖ along the ―shore of the page.‖

That’s quite creative! Because it also deals with words, Billy Collins’s poem

―Thesaurus‖ contains some similar-type comparisons and descriptions.

In the poem ―Thesaurus,‖ a key feature is the use of an extended

metaphor for a large portion of this poem. It relates the words in the thesaurus

to a family at a reunion in a park:

It means treasury, but it is just a place

where words congregate with their relatives,

a big park where hundreds of family reunions

are always being held,

house, home, abode, dwelling, lodgings, and digs,

all sharing the same picnic basket and thermos;

hairy, hirsute, woolly, furry, fleecy, and shaggy

all running a sack race or throwing horseshoes,

inert, static, motionless, fixed and immobile

standing and kneeling in rows for a group photograph.

(―Thesaurus‖ lines 5-14)

The words are given personalities and lives by the word choice Collins employs,

allowing the reader to almost see what is going on.

A great visual example of this sort of detail and imagery can be found in

Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, released in 1951 (Appendix F). The visual

details, vibrant colors, and bizarre images throughout the film provide a very

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intense visual experience. In fact, there was controversy surrounding the film

as some people claimed that drugs such as LSD were used to ―assist‖ the

creation of the film due to the film’s ―trippy‖ visuals. This film was based off of

a book by Lewis Carroll entitled Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which was

published years earlier. This children’s story follows the journey of a young girl

named Alice through Wonderland, a place she enters after falling down a rabbit

hole. Through her many adventures she must escape, and the film ends with

Alice seeing her sleeping self, realizing it was all a dream.

Throughout the film, many visual metaphors and alternate meanings are

used, and the detail and ―craziness‖ is vivid and bright. An example is a bird

that, instead of a torso, has a large bird cage with a small bird inside of it. This

could be a play on ―rib cage,‖ the part of the body that normally exists in much

of that area. This film was released when Collins was a child, and because it is

regarded as a ―classic‖ film, there is a good chance that a young Billy Collins

watched this film. Perhaps what he saw in it had an influence on him as far as

description and detail goes. It is yet another childhood experience that could,

even if subconsciously, form your adult life and thought processes.

[GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT ARTWORK #2]

[LITERARY THREAD CONNECTION FOR ARTWORK #2]

Billy Collins’s use of detail and description is something shared

throughout his poetry, other poetry, and artwork throughout his life and our

life today. All of these utilize description, figurative language, comparisons, and

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humor to create a vivid mental scene of what is happening in it. The human

being’s desire for sensory overload is fulfilled in this. <-Conclusion unfinished

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Summary Paragraph

The language is very Kevin like, lots of your type of words, so if Mr. D. knows

how you talk, then you score should be high for voice. That being said, you

have some work to do. You don’t have much diversity on criticism, anybody

who is the poet laureate will have some criticism on his poetry. Your poetry

analysis was mainly block quotes and the order of your paper is not exactly on

with the outline. You are also missing some portions of you paper. Just insert a

screen clipped .jpeg file of you mark up for your appendix. Good things: Kevin

Cabano type language, good art connection for Alice and Wonderland, nice

epigraph, that too is very Kevin like. Not much citation for parenthetical

references, if there are even any. Introduction 4. Bio and Histo 3. Lit in Poems

2, needs criticism. Art con 3 need another connection. Conclus 2 it’s not even

there.

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Appendix A

THE AFTERLIFE. Billy Collins. 1991.

While you are preparing for sleep, brushing your teeth,

or riffling through a magazine in bed,

the dead of the day are setting out on their journey.

They are moving off in all imaginable directions,

5each according to his own private belief,

and this is the secret that silent Lazarus would not reveal:

that everyone is right, as it turns out.

You go to the place you always thought you would go,

the place you kept lit in an alcove in your head.

10Some are being shot up a funnel of flashing colors

into a zone of light, white as January sun.

Others are standing naked before a forbidding judge who sits

with a golden ladder on one side, a coal chute on the other.

Some have already joined the celestial choir

15and are singing as if they have been doing this forever,

while the less inventive find themselves stuck

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in a big air-conditioned room full of food and chorus girls.

Some are approaching the apartment of the female God,

a woman in her forties with short wiry hair

20and glasses hanging from her neck by a string.

With one eye she regards the dead through a hole in her door.

There are those who are squeezing into the bodies

of animals—eagles and leopards—and one trying on

the skin of a monkey like a tight suit,

25ready to begin another life in a more simple key,

while others float off into some benign vagueness,

little units of energy heading for the ultimate elsewhere.

There are even a few classicists being led to an underworld

by a mythological creature with a beard and hooves.

30He will bring them to the mouth of a furious cave

guarded over by Edith Hamilton and her three-headed dog.

The rest just lie on their backs in their coffins

wishing they could return so they could learn Italian

or see the pyramids, or play some golf in a light rain.

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35They wish they could wake in the morning like you

and stand at a window examining the winter trees,

every branch traced with the ghost writing of snow.

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Appendix B

MARGINALIA. Billy Collins. 1998.

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,

skirmishes against the author

raging along the borders of every page

in tiny black script.

5If I could just get my hands on you,

Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,

they seem to say,

I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.

Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -

10"Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" -

that kind of thing.

I remember once looking up from my reading,

my thumb as a bookmark,

trying to imagine what the person must look like

15why wrote "Don't be a ninny"

alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.

Students are more modest

needing to leave only their splayed footprints

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along the shore of the page.

20One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's.

Another notes the presence of "Irony"

fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.

Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,

Hands cupped around their mouths.

25"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.

30And if you have managed to graduate from college

without ever having written "Man vs. Nature"

in a margin, perhaps now

is the time to take one step forward.

We have all seized the white perimeter as our own

35and reached for a pen if only to show

we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;

we pressed a thought into the wayside,

planted an impression along the verge.

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Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria

40jotted along the borders of the Gospels

brief asides about the pains of copying,

a bird signing near their window,

or the sunlight that illuminated their page-

anonymous men catching a ride into the future

45on a vessel more lasting than themselves.

And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,

they say, until you have read him

enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.

Yet the one I think of most often,

50the one that dangles from me like a locket,

was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye

I borrowed from the local library

one slow, hot summer.

I was just beginning high school then,

55reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room,

and I cannot tell you

how vastly my loneliness was deepened,

how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,

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when I found on one page

60A 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."

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Appendix C

THESAURUS. Billy Collins. 1997.

It could be the name of a prehistoric beast

that roamed the Paleozoic earth, rising up

on its hind legs to show off its large vocabulary,

or some lover in a myth who is metamorphosed into a book.

5It means treasury, but it is just a place

where words congregate with their relatives,

a big park where hundreds of family reunions

are always being held,

house, home, abode, dwelling, lodgings, and digs,

10all sharing the same picnic basket and thermos;

hairy, hirsute, woolly, furry, fleecy, and shaggy

all running a sack race or throwing horseshoes,

inert, static, motionless, fixed and immobile

standing and kneeling in rows for a group photograph.

15Here father is next to sire and brother close

to sibling, separated only by fine shades of meaning.

And every group has its odd cousin, the one

who traveled the farthest to be here:

astereognosis, polydipsia, or some eleven

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20syllable, unpronounceable substitute for the word tool.

Even their own relatives have to squint at their name tags.

I can see my own copy up on a high shelf.

I rarely open it, because I know there is no

25such thing as a synonym and because I get nervous

around people who always assemble with their own kind,

forming clubs and nailing signs to closed front doors

while others huddle alone in the dark streets.

I would rather see words out on their own, away

30from their families and the warehouse of Roget,

wandering the world where they sometimes fall

in love with a completely different word.

Surely, you have seen pairs of them standing forever

next to each other on the same line inside a poem,

35a small chapel where weddings like these,

between perfect strangers, can take place

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Appendix D

Could not figure out how to put in my markup.

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Appendix E

Could not figure out how to put in my markup.

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Appendix F

Alice in Wonderland. Walt Disney, 1951

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Appendix G

Still cannot find 2nd art connection.

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Appendix H

―Embrace‖ by Billy Collins

You know the parlor trick. wrap your arms around your own

body

and from the back it looks like

someone is embracing you her hands grasping your shirt

her fingernails teasing your neck

from the front it is another story you never looked so alone

your crossed elbows and screwy grin

you could be waiting for a tailor to fit you with a straight jacket

one that would hold you really

tight.

―Cell Phone‖ by Kevin Cabano

After Billy Collins

I’ve done it, and I’m sure you have

too

If you’re being ignored you take your cell

And pretend to text, making it look

like You are popular, conversing with

someone

Your faces displays emotions, that aren’t true

That are in response to these fake

messages Maybe you pretend to speak

To someone who isn’t really there

And you might think you look fine

But inside you know there is emptiness

But if you are in the wrong place,

someone notices And can see that you are just a sad

lie

Alone and with no one to care for you

Waiting on the day that never comes

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Works Cited

Have not yet compiled this. I have the sources but still need to bring

them all together here.