They were beautiful in the clear early light— red, yellow, blue and green— is all I wanted to say about them, although for the rest of the day I pictured a lighter version of myself calling time through a little megaphone, first to the months of the year, then to the twelve apostles, all grimacing as they leaned and pulled on the long wooden oars.
— from Brightly Colored Boats on the Banks of the Charles by Billy Collins
Friedrich Schiller called Joy the spark of divinity but she visits me on a regular basis, and it doesn’t take much for her to appear— the salt next to the pepper by the stove, the garbage man ascending his station on the back of the moving garbage truck, or I’m just eating a banana in the car and listening to Buddy Guy.
In other words, she seems down-to-earth, like a girl getting off a bus with a suitcase and no one’s there to meet her. It’s a little after four in the afternoon, one of the first warm days of spring. She sits on her suitcase to wait and slides on her sunglasses. How do I know she’s listening to the birds?
I like writing about where I am, where I happen to be sitting, the humidity or the clouds, the scene outside the window— a pink tree in bloom, a neighbor walking his small, nervous dog. And if I am drinking a cup of tea at the time or a small glass of whiskey, I will find a line to put it on.
— from In the Room of a Thousand Miles by Billy Collins
One of my favorite living poets is Billy Collins, and no less than the Wall Street Journal has called him “America’s Favorite Poet.” If you were to do a search on this blog, you would find five references to Billy Collins.
This year’s festival is the 10th, and as usual, the two-day event was loaded with many great writers, and when it comes to poets, Collins is worthy of “rock-star” status. Let there were two poets I regret not being able to see and visit with: Sarah Cortez who has been a frequent reader at the annual Walt Whitman and Emily Dickenson birthday celebrations part of the Montgomery County Literary Arts Council “Writers In Performance Series” (One of the blogs I manage but have not updated since leaving Texas in 2010, is Writers In Performance); Juan Felipe Herrera a poet, performance artist and activist. Herrera is the son of migrant farm workers and was the U.S. Poet Laureate from 2015–2017.
There is so much to do and see at this annual festival, which means there is so much to miss.
— kenne
Billy Collins at the Tucson Festival of Books, 2018 — Image by kenne
Image by Joy
Video — Billy Collins reading about goats fainting at the Tucson Festival of Books (March 10, 2018)
As we near Mother’s Day, 2015, much will be written, gifts given and loved shared. Remembering Mother is truly a daily exercise in life. Over the last ten years, this blog has had many postings on mothers. One of my favorite poems about mothers is one by Billy Collins, titled, “The Lanyard.”
THE LANYARD
The other day as I was ricocheting slowly off the blue walls of this room bouncing from typewriter to piano from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor, I found myself in the “L” section of the dictionary where my eyes fell upon the word, Lanyard. No cookie nibbled by a French novelist could send one more suddenly into the past. A past where I sat at a workbench at a camp by a deep Adirondack lake learning how to braid thin plastic strips into a lanyard. A gift for my mother. I had never seen anyone use a lanyard. Or wear one, if that’s what you did with them. But that did not keep me from crossing strand over strand again and again until I had made a boxy, red and white lanyard for my mother. She gave me life and milk from her breasts, and I gave her a lanyard She nursed me in many a sick room, lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips, set cold facecloths on my forehead then led me out into the airy light and taught me to walk and swim and I in turn presented her with a lanyard. “Here are thousands of meals” she said, “and here is clothing and a good education.” “And here is your lanyard,” I replied, “which I made with a little help from a counselor.” “Here is a breathing body and a beating heart, strong legs, bones and teeth and two clear eyes to read the world.” she whispered. “And here,” I said, “is the lanyard I made at camp.” “And here,” I wish to say to her now, “is a smaller gift. Not the archaic truth, that you can never repay your mother, but the rueful admission that when she took the two-toned lanyard from my hands, I was as sure as a boy could be that this useless worthless thing I wove out of boredom would be enough to make us even.”
Bee On Desert Marigold — Image by kenne
Billy Collins at the Tucson Festival of Books, 2018 — Image by kenne
Image by Joy
The Hikers — Canvas Image by kenne
