Sober, succinct, after my own heart, a man in a hurry (can it

happen again?)- still not!

May God bless Bill!

I do think that poetry is ultimately about death, also. It is what we are going forward into, trying to understand bravely, and dealing with everyday. It may not be a conscious part of every poem or our every thought, but it still lingers all the time. I write poetry, also, and found it refreshing that Collins also talks about the horrors of people feeling that they have to understand a poem. Few people who don't write poetry seem to understand what I am doing; I tell them to enjoy the language, the imagery, the rhythm, and the layout on the page and not to get hung up on meaning. Someone just suggested that my poetry is like jazz, and I liked that very much. I also wonder about MFA programs. At one time I would have died to have been able to get into such a program; alas, I was too busy living, raising kids, trying to get by with little money, etc. I am okay with that now. I'll continue writing until I quit writing. I don't need an MFA for that.

I saw I'M NOT THERE this weekend. You remind me a little of the Kenneth Tynan figure and the discussion it embraces.

There's a big difference between a practitioner and a theorist. You sound like a theorist. Holding out for "nothing" is a lot more challenging and productive than going "in" with any notion whatsoever--even if it's as broad as "death" and can be easily related to it.

Another such notion is love i.e. all poetry or communication is either an expression or a cry for it. Either way it is reductive and limiting to the artist.

Dylan represented the practitioners aesthetic perfectly and it produced clearly the greatest songmaker of our time, whether you personally like the work or not. It's so much better a movie than all the others combined, but I doubt if it will win many awards and much of an audience. I look forward to future posts from you.

I liked this quite a bit. One commenter calls BS on "death" as "the theme" of poetry seeing it as a dead letter to KNOW the answer of what poetry is about. However, this is not what Collins was asserting. Even in the most vital moments of writing or living there is always the stark fact of death--regardless of one's awareness of it. This doesn't mean all poetry/literature is doomed to a melancholy acquiescence to this; rather, as Tennyson has Ulysses say, even when our "heroic hearts" are "Made weak by time and fate" we are "but strong in will", that we are beings made "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

We can write about death head-on, or write paeans to happy days in the face of our ultimate fate, or we can write nonsense verse...none of this makes our words ONLY about death and Collins goes on to say that the work of poetry, reading and writing, goes on inside the poem, that the experience of poetry is about that movement--getting around in it and moving from here to there and back again inside this world of words.

This presentation by Collins seemed refreshingly free of BS. Many thanks!

I think Collins is a charming guy but full of shit. I'd have a beer with him any day of the week. But once you think you know what "poetry" is about it's all over--even if your pick is as safe as "death."

It's the kind of thing you say if you've been hanging out in front of class too long. Maybe it's what aspirants need to hear these days. I find Collins poetry more cartoonish than anything else, the opposite apparently from his perception of himself.

The graduate school explosion explains quite another phenomenon, which is why so much poetry sounds alike these days and takes so few chances. Like he said, it is written in committee for the purpose of eventually getting a degree that gives one a job with the summers off.

I've written poetry all my life. I do it because if I don't I suffer. It is necessary in order to remain sane and say with pride I only ever took one course where it was welcomed and understood by the teacher. The man lives forever in my heart.

(Ken Macrorie)

Poetry is where words meet the experience of humanity--or what it is we are calling "humanity" at the present time. More than any form it determines what words mean. It is hard to justfy its place for commercial reasons, but that's what has happened and is probably unavoidable. At least it's the sign of a civil society. This nation needs that if it needs anything today.

It is the beginning of the "genre" called "literature." It is the most direct way we have of communicating our existence in a form that can be shared even if so few take the time to read it. When do I get my job at the university, and what are the health care benefits?

I teach art and I was very interested in Billy Collin's discussion of teaching poetry. I watched it twice but it abruptly ended when he was talking about a better way to teach...how frustrating.

FYI, I tried watching Billy Collins, America's poet laureate all the way through, but the VDO kept aborting at the point where . . . well, I'm not exactly what was about to happen, but Billy was talking about poetry, and I was enraptured, and the VDO kept GOING OUT. Most ennervating, especially since you may well have denied me entrance to Nirvana. Thanks for nothing. Kindly cut that nonsense out for good, K?.

Thanks,

cm