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89907a1 Sometimes the notes are ferocious, skirmishes against the author raging along the borders of every page in tiny black script. If 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 - Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" - that kind of thing. I remember once looking up from my reading, my thumb as a bookmark, try.. words literature reading poetry Billy Collins
9da932f Sometimes the notes are ferocious, skirmishes against the author raging along the borders of every page in tiny black script. If 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 - Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" - that kind of thing. I remember once looking up from my reading, my thumb as a bookmark, try.. words literature reading poetry Billy Collins
1238665 It seems only yesterday I used to believe Billy Collins
c2b2c12 I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author's name on the shore. But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin .. Billy Collins
4922f09 Vade Mecum I want the scissors to be sharp and the table perfectly level when you cut me out of my life and paste me in that book you always carry. Billy Collins
ccee28a The History Teacher Trying to protect his students' innocence he told them the Ice Age was really just the Chilly Age, a period of a million years when everyone had to wear sweaters. And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age, named after the long driveways of the time. The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more than an outbreak of questions such as "How far is it from here to Madrid?" "What do you call the matador's hat?" The War of the Roses t.. Billy Collins
f9f5297 But some nights, I must tell you, I go down there after everyone has fallen asleep. I swim back and forth in the echoing blackness. I sing a love song as well as I can, lost for a while in the home of the rain. Billy Collins
238625e The whole idea of it makes me feel like I'm coming down with something, something worse than any stomach ache or the headaches I get from reading in bad light-- a kind of measles of the spirit, a mumps of the psyche, a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul. You tell me it is too early to be looking back, but that is because you have forgotten the perfect simplicity of being one and the beautiful complexity introduced by two. But I can lie on .. poem Billy Collins
15c6ab0 the trouble with poetry is that it encourages the writing of more poetry... Billy Collins
22355ac I see all of us reading ourselves away from ourselves, straining in circles of light to find more light until the line of words becomes a trail of crumbs that we follow across a page of fresh snow words literature reading poetry Billy Collins
27c4ada I could feel the day offering itself to me, and I wanted nothing more than to be in the moment-but which moment? Not that one, or that one, or that one, Billy Collins
733cd7f It is time to float on the waters of the night. Time to wrap my arms around this book and press it to my chest, life preserver in a sea of unremarkable men and women, anonymous faces on the street, a hundred thousand unalphabetized things, a million forgotten hours. poetry Billy Collins
1cd1db5 Dancing Towards Bethlehem If there is only enough time in the final minutes of the 20th century for one last dance I would like to be dancing it slowly with you, say, in the ballroom of a seaside hotel. My palm would press into the small of your back as the past hundred years collapsed into a pile of mirrors or buttons or frivolous shoes, just as the floor of the 19th century gave way and disappeared in a red cloud of brick dust. There will.. Billy Collins
d838ff2 But tomorrow, dawn will come the way I picture her, barefoot and disheveled, standing outside my window in one of the fragile cotton dresses of the poor. She will look in at me with her thin arms extended, offering a handful of birdsong and a small cup of light. Billy Collins
5f7ef59 all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means. Billy Collins
66a9028 balancing the wish to be lost with the need to be found. Billy Collins
c538647 The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones. Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye and watched the quadr.. Billy Collins
456bb1c The Death of Allegory I am wondering what became of all those tall abstractions that used to pose, robed and statuesque, in paintings and parade about on the pages of the Renaissance displaying their capital letters like license plates. Truth cantering on a powerful horse, Chastity, eyes downcast, fluttering with veils. Each one was marble come to life, a thought in a coat, Courtesy bowing with one hand always extended, Villainy sh.. Billy Collins
5fdef33 It seems only yesterday I used to believe there was nothing under my skin but light. If you cut me I could shine. But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life, I skin my knees. I bleed. poetry growing-up Billy Collins
9062c46 This is not what it is like to be you, I realized as a few of your magnificent clouds flew over the rooftop. It is just me thinking about being you. And before I headed back down the hill, I walked in a circle around your house, making an invisible line which you would have to cross before dark. Billy Collins
70c5736 The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor Billy Collins
0d692ff Today I pass the time reading a favorite haiku, saying the few words over and over. It feels like eating the same small, perfect grape again and again. I walk through the house reciting it and leave its letters falling through the air of every room. I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it. I say it in front of a painting of the sea. I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf. I listen to myself saying it, then I say it without listen.. Billy Collins
df8c32a 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 loneliness poetry Billy Collins
9e220d4 And I should mention the light which falls through the big windows this time of day italicizing everything it touches... Billy Collins
4e6286c This is the middle. Things have had time to get complicated, messy, really. Nothing is simple anymore... This is the thick of things. So much is crowded into the middle-- ...too much to name, too much to think about. life-lessons life Billy Collins
34bf7d3 I am the sound of rain on the roof. I also happen to be the shooting star, the evening paper blowing down an alley, and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table. I am also the moon in the trees and the blind woman's tea cup. But don't worry, I am not the bread and the knife. You are still the bread and the knife. You will always be the bread and the knife, not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow--the wine. Billy Collins
b2ff47c But earlier this week on a wooded path, I thought the swans afloat on the reservoir were the true geniuses, the ones who had figured out how to fly, how to be both beautiful and brutal, and how to mate for life. Billy Collins
54f616a But my heart is always propped up in a field on its tripod, ready for the next arrow. Billy Collins
2164fb3 I love to move like a mouse inside this puzzle for the body, balancing the wish to be lost with the need to be found. poetry Billy Collins
0a40090 We must always look at things from the point of view of eternity, the college theologians used to insist, from which, I imagine, we would all appear to have speed lines trailing behind us as we rush along the road of the world, as we rush down the long tunnel of time- the biker, of course, drunk on the wind, but also the man reading by a fire... Billy Collins
360e114 Grave What do you think of my new glasses I asked as I stood under a shade tree before the joined grave of my parents, and what followed was a long silence that descended on the rows of the dead and on the fields and the woods beyond, one of the one hundred kinds of silence according to the Chinese belief, each one distinct from the others, but the differences being so faint that only a few special monks were able to tell them apart. The.. Billy Collins
6344e30 I can hear the library humming in the night, a choir of authors murmuring inside their books along the unlit, alphabetical shelves, Giovanni Pontano next to Pope, Dumas next to his son, each one stitched into his own private coat, together forming a low, gigantic chord of language. words library literature reading poetry Billy Collins
469243f And the reason I am writing this on the back of a manila envelope now that they have left the train together is to tell you that when she turned to lift the large, delicate cello onto the overhead rack, I saw him looking up at her and what she was doing the way the eyes of saints are painted when they are looking up at God Billy Collins
84a5654 In a rush this weekday morning, I tap the horn as I speed past the cemetery where my parents are buried side by side beneath a slab of smooth granite. Then, all day, I think of him rising up to give me that look Billy Collins
5b7d4ca a long time ago when cataclysms were common as sneezes and land masses slid around the globe looking for places to settle down and become continents, someone introduced us at a party. time love forever-love forever Billy Collins
0e63818 No wonder you rise in the middle of the night to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war. No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted out of a love poem that you used to know by heart. forgetfulness Billy Collins
b808c0c You trip over a word while carrying a tray of vocabulary out to the pool only to discover that broken glass is a good topic. poetry verse Billy Collins
b657a28 It is possible to be struck by a meteor or a single-engine plane while reading in a chair at home. Safes drop from rooftops and flatten the odd pedestrian mostly within the panels of the comics, but still, we know it is possible, as well as the flash of summer lightning, the thermos toppling over, spilling out on the grass. And we know the message can be delivered from within. The heart, no valentine, decides to quit after lunch, the power .. poetry living life Billy Collins
8d906e0 First, her tippet made of tulle, easily lifted off her shoulders and laid on the back of a wooden chair. And her bonnet, the bow undone with a light forward pull. Then the long white dress, a more complicated matter with mother-of-pearl buttons down the back, so tiny and numerous that it takes forever before my hands can part the fabric, like a swimmer's dividing water, and slip inside. You will want to know that she was standing by an open.. poetry Billy Collins
9307d5c Is there a better method of departure by night than this quiet bon voyage with an open book, the sole companion who has come to see you off, to wave you into the dark waters beyond language? words reading poetry language Billy Collins
415fcf9 O Canada I have not forgotten you, as I kneel in my canoe, beholding this vision of a bookcase. You are the paddle, the snowshoe, the cabin in the pines. You are the moose in the clearing and the moosehead on the wall. You are the rapids, the propeller, the kerosene lamp. You are the dust that coats the roadside berries. But not only that, you are the two boys with pails walking along that road. poetry Billy Collins
b9176d7 perhaps the answer is simply one: one female angel dancing alone in her stocking feet, a small jazz combo working in the background. She sways like a branch in the wind, her beautiful eyes closed, and the tall thin bassist leans over to glance at his watch because she has been dancing forever, and now it is very late, even for musicians. eternity Billy Collins
49cf3f8 Cheerios One bright morning in a restaurant in Chicago as I waited for my eggs and toast, I opened the Tribune only to discover that I was the same age as Cheerios. Indeed, I was a few months older than Cheerios for today, the newspaper announced, was the seventieth birthday of Cheerios whereas mine had occurred earlier in the year. Already I could hear them whispering behind my stooped and threadbare back, Why that dude's older .. Billy Collins
0e2ad78 saw him looking up at her and what she was doing the way the eyes of saints are painted when they are looking up at God when he is doing something remarkable, something that identifies him as God. Billy Collins
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