Jon,

Collins reads to me as light verse, and as such it doesn't bother me,
though I don't really have time for it, since I find it rather dull.  If
someone else likes to read his stuff, that's okay with me.  But, given
the choice between Collins and, say, Raymond Chandler, I'll take Chandler.

My earlier comment on Collins was provoked by a syllogism that attacked
much poetry and seemed to include the Modernists and Post Modernists.
 Such a stance against much poetry that comes from a
Pound/Zukofsky/Olson tradition draws fire from me wherever I find it.
 And, since I have a particular love for Ronald Johnson's "ARK", which
is difficult to find anywhere, I'm not impressed by the ubiquity of
Collins' work.

Readers of poetry who were originally introduced to light verse to
prevent them from becoming discouraged by more substantial writing
rarely develop a taste for anything else.

Dirk

Jon & Anne Weidler wrote:

> This is not Pound related, but it's wonderful.  For those who like Kurt
> Vonnegut, you should not do anything else until you read this brief
> interview from "In These Times" magazine:
>
> http://inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=38_0_4_0_C
>
> On a side note, not to start any kind of venomous bloodbath, I can't
> quite see what it is about Billy Collins that rankles so many.
> Honestly, even before he became po-it lauriat, his poems caught my
> attention.  I remembered his poem "Marginalia" from its original
> appearance in _Poetry_ a few years ago, and was quite glad to read more
> of his work.  I grant that it resembles Frost more than it does Pound
> or Ashbery, but it doesn't seem to me that "plain" diction in a poem,
> or obvious rhetorical intentions to engage readers at a non-specialist
> level are by themselves sufficient criteria to damn an entire creative
> enterprise.  Collins has a humorous and surprisingly penetrating
> manner, and his fame is not at all undeserved.  Russell Baker said
> once, "I gave up on new poetry myself thirty years ago, when most of it
> began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens on a
> hostile world", and for the most part I absolutely agree with him.  For
> that reason, I was thrilled, actually, to sell Collins' work back when
> I worked in a bookstore here in Oak Park.  My customers appreciated it
> often, the few ones who would ask about new poetry, and there was a
> troup of lovely old women who worshipped his every syllable in a way I
> found infectious.  Honestly, there's nothing facile about Collins (just
> as Frost is only deceptively homely and "of the people"), and a poem
> that doesn't sound alienated in the way Baker suggests is valuable for
> lots of purposes.  _Picnic, Lightning_ for my mom on Christmas: $13.95.
>  The look on my mother's face when she understands a poem I've asked
> her to read: priceless.
>
> Sure, Collins is accessible and popular and funny and good at appealing
> to the writing teachers among us -- so why are those things insipid,
> again?
>
> Please no severe flames -- I have but my meager opinions, and have
> disposed of my asbestos suit for health reasons.  It might simply be
> that the "typical" reader of Pound enjoys a palette that tends to
> reject Collins-like straight-forwardness.  Where Pound writes
> double-black-diamond poems, Collins takes time to lay out some nice,
> steady greens for newcomers.   Everyone knows that expert skiers do not
> waste their time on the bunny slopes, but they shouldn't begrudge the
> gentle slopes their gentility.
>
> Regards to all -
> Jon
>
Dirk Johnson
676 Geary #407
San Francisco, CA 94102

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