Billy Collins Recital at MSUM

By Adam Heidebrink
Contributing Writer

No poet since Robert Frost has managed to combine high critical acclaim with such broad popular appeal as Billy Collins.

Few poets, indeed, have balanced the line between popular poetry and literary acceptance with the grace and success of Billy Collins. His poetry has become a cultural phenomenon. His book sales and standing-room-only reading audiences reflect his wide-reaching success.

This year, the Tom McGrath Visiting Writers Series (the Series) is proud to announce that the 2001-2003 United States Poet Laureate, Billy Collins, will read at Minnesota State University, Moorhead, on September 23, celebrating a quarter century of bringing writers to the Fargo/Moorhead area.

Founded in 1986, the McGrath Writers Series honors award-winning writer and MSUM Professor, Thomas McGrath. Over the past 25 years, this series has brought more than 150 writers to the F-M area and supported many other local authors. During this time, the program has remained true to its original mission: to bring to the MSUM campus the finest writers from the region [Great Plains and Midwest] to share their work with students, faculty, and the larger community.

In fact, the visiting authors often far surpass Tom McGrath’s mission. In addition to public readings, visiting authors often present an hour-long “Writer’s Craft” discussion and teach a graduate writing seminar. On many occassions, the opportunities provided by the Series are the first experiences students have with established writers. After 25 years of serving the community, the Tom McGrath Visiting Writers Series continues to be one of the region’s most distinguished cultural events.

This year, the Series launches its season with a reading by Billy Collins, who has, to date, published nine collections of poetry, edited two anthologies of contemporary poetry, and guest edited a third anthology. In addition, his poetry has earned many awards throughout his career, including: the Oscar Blumenthal Prize, the Bess Hokin Prize, the Frederick Bock Prize, and the Levinson Prize.

Collins’ first major success was “Questions About Angels,” a title that suggests insight, curiosity, and yet does so with divine simplicity. His tone is conversational, one that everyone can appreciate: “the waiter the cabdriver, and the old man on the corner” says Elizabeth Kelly Gillogly in Poets and Writers magazine, “he acknowledges them.” His subjects, vocabulary, and tone are founded on human emotions, which most certainly include everyone.

Writing to this wide audience, his work is generally light-hearted and witty; however, after the attack on 9/11, during which Collins was Poet Laureate, he commemorated those who lost their lives in his poem “The Names,” which he read before Congress at the one year anniversary of the attack.

Collins has, in times of hardship and in times of joy, been a poet of community, bringing together various cultures with his poetic voice.

Collins continues to charm his audience with his most recent publication, “Ballistics.”

Collins speaks, in poetry and in life, with gentle grace of language, blending humility with humor. His words become little tokens of wisdom: “It is enough,” he says in his poem “No Things,” “to look more closely here at these small leaves, / these sentinel thorns, / whose employment it is to guard the rose.” These lines speak of the significance but not the overwhelming importance of rose thorns. It is enough that many tiny thorns, together, can protect a single blossom of beauty.

Collins writes with this message in mind: it is enough that a poet observes the world for the unobserved details and then tenderly points them out. He doesn’t dramatize. The world is beautiful as it is, and his readers discover and rediscover this beauty each time they pick up a volume of his poetry.

The fun, inspiring language of Collins exemplifies his poetic philosophy. He has written two essays on modern poetry, discussing the interconnectedness of memory, poetry, and pleasure.

Above all, he says, a poem should make an individual joyous. To ensure this happiness in his reader, with clocklike regularity Collins begins his poetry with common experiences before transforming his work into something more fantastical. In his words, a poem must “springboard into zones more exhilarating than the strictly personal, zones where language, not history, is king.”

Recording memory in words may amount to a history or a memoir–but it simply isn’t enough to create a poem. The medium of poetry, for Collins, has a special task: an escape. Framed in realism (perhaps even disguised),  he arranges language as a portal to the imagination. His conversational tone invites the reader to join him on this vacation from reality.

One thing that makes Collins’ so enjoyable is his strikingly unique subject matter. He writes about the Death of a Hat, Shoveling Snow with Buddha, and Hippos on Holiday, among many other original titles. It doesn’t matter much what the poet records. Remember, he lives in a world where language is king.

Collins delivers his poems – however strange or startling they might be – with casual elegance. He dresses up his poetry the way the working class would dress up for a daughter’s prom, always enough to recognize the importance of the event and memorialize the experience.

For many years, Collins has inspired in the American people an interest in poetry. His words, his wisdom, and the many pleasures attached to his poetry has become a cultural phenomenon, one that dignifies the many (sometimes strange, sometimes serious) conquests of the human experience. He is, by and large, one who understands people.

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If You Go:

What: Billy Collins
Where: Gaede Stage, MSUM
When: Thurs, Sept 23, 8pm
Info: 218.477.2199