Billy Collins is great entertainment. His humorous poems are a refreshing take on modern poetry. Most of them made me laugh out loud at least once, especially The Revenant, containing a brief look into the bitter mind of a dog, which I highly recommend to anyone. Personally, Satire and myself are BFFs, so coming across a poet who can utilize it so skillfully was a delight.
At first glance, Collins’ work felt like a comedian’s routine transformed into poetry. A simple joke, good for a laugh and highly valued for that, but ultimately lacking in depth and unable to make a real impact on my life. Of course The Revenant has stayed in my head for a couple of days and for fun I’ll probably try to emulate his style once in a while, but the admiration of his poetry, as with anything- evil geniuses, for an example- would have to vary from person to person.
Through his humor and predominantly colloquial writings, Collins seems to believe that a poem is a cool way to have a conservation and easy relationship with the audience, and in doing so tries to tip the scale of poetry back to more approachable levels. I can see this being especially admired in beginners to poetry- younger versions of us familiar only with Shakespeare and the dry analysis of any other classroom poem autopsied for a grade and beaten with the Boring stick. Collins work is much more interesting and understandable. However, there are many of those out there, myself included, who enjoy the drama of a long, rambling angst or the beautiful recollection of a tragedy, which is simply not Collins’ style.
Instead, Collins uses ordinary occurrences and blurbs of thought, changes them into poetry form and has a conversation with the world, as easy as you telling your friend about that crazy wacko around the corner that started break-dancing in the middle of an intersection. Collins urges his poetry to casually take us by the hand and point out the existence of other perspectives both about poetry itself and about the basic topics he discusses. I believe that Collins’ calling in poetry is to encourage over-stressed poets and would-be poets to take a step back from life, pal around in the comfortable shores of the mundane and take some pleasure in the small stuff, for once.
strikinginretrospect 