The Trouble with Poetry by Billy Collins Page A

page .
    eISBN: 978-0-307-43271-1
    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
    Collins, Billy.
The trouble with poetry: and other poems / Billy Collins.
p.  cm.
I. Title: Trouble with poetry. II. Title.
PS3553.O47478T76 2005
811′.54—dc22      2005046562
    v3.1

To my students and my teachers

My idea of paradise is a perfect automobile
going thirty miles an hour on a smooth road
to a twelfth-century cathedral.
—HENRY JAMES

A Note to the Reader About this Poetry eBook
    The way a poem looks on the page is a vital aspect of its being. The length of its lines and the poet’s use of stanza breaks give the poem a physical shape, which guides our reading of the poem and distinguishes it from prose.
    With an eBook, this distinct shape may be altered if you choose to take advantage of one of the functions of your eReader by changing the size of the type for greater legibility. Doing this may cause the poem to have line breaks not intended by the poet. To preserve the physical integrity of the poem, we have formatted the eBook so that any words that get bumped down to a new line in the poem will be noticeably indented. This way, you can still appreciate the poem’s original shape regardless of your choice of type size.

You, Reader
    I wonder how you are going to feel
    when you find out
    that I wrote this instead of you,
    that it was I who got up early
    to sit in the kitchen
    and mention with a pen
    the rain-soaked windows,
    the ivy wallpaper,
    and the goldfish circling in its bowl.
    Go ahead and turn aside,
    bite your lip and tear out the page,
    but, listen—it was just a matter of time
    before one of us happened
    to notice the unlit candles
    and the clock humming on the wall.
    Plus, nothing happened that morning—
    a song on the radio,
    a car whistling along the road outside—
    and I was only thinking
    about the shakers of salt and pepper
    that were standing side by side on a place mat.
    I wondered if they had become friends
    after all these years
    or if they were still strangers to one another
    like you and I
    who manage to be known and unknown
    to each other at the same time—
    me at this table with a bowl of pears,
    you leaning in a doorway somewhere
    near some blue hydrangeas, reading this.

ONE
 

Monday
    The birds are in their trees,
    the toast is in the toaster,
    and the poets are at their windows.
    They are at their windows
    in every section of the tangerine of earth—
    the Chinese poets looking up at the moon,
    the American poets gazing out
    at the pink and blue ribbons of sunrise.
    The clerks are at their desks,
    the miners are down in their mines,
    and the poets are looking out their windows
    maybe with a cigarette, a cup of tea,
    and maybe a flannel shirt or bathrobe is involved.
    The proofreaders are playing the ping-pong
    game of proofreading,
    glancing back and forth from page to page,
    the chefs are dicing celery and potatoes,
    and the poets are at their windows
    because it is their job for which
    they are paid nothing every Friday afternoon.
    Which window it hardly seems to matter
    though many have a favorite,
    for there is always something to see—
    a bird grasping a thin branch,
    the headlights of a taxi rounding a corner,
    those two boys in wool caps angling across the street.
    The fishermen bob in their boats,
    the linemen climb their round poles,
    the barbers wait by their mirrors and chairs,
    and the poets continue to stare
    at the cracked birdbath or a limb knocked down by the wind.
    By now, it should go without saying
    that what the oven is to the baker
    and the berry-stained blouse to the dry cleaner,
    so the window is to the poet.
    Just think—
    before the invention of the window,
    the poets would have had to put on a jacket
    and a winter hat to go outside
    or remain indoors with only a wall to stare at.
    And when I say a wall,
    I do not mean a wall with striped wallpaper
    and a sketch of a cow in a frame.
    I mean a cold wall of fieldstones,
    the wall of the medieval