Sailing Alone Around the Room Read online

  PRAISE FOR Sailing Alone Around the Room

  “Collins’s new greatest hits collection, Sailing Alone Around the Room, is certainly hospitable. There are brainy, observant, spit-shined moments on almost every page.… You finish [it] feeling pleased that such a sensible and gifted man is America’s poet laureate—young writers have plenty to learn from his clarity and apparent ease.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Collins uses ordinary words … and his sentences have the cadences of speech. They usually start with plain statements … then something strange happens. A rocket goes off, images burst out like fireworks, and life’s backyard becomes a magic kingdom.… Collins is often very funny—but more startling than the wit is the way his mind makes unexpected leaps and splices.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “Collins’s new and selected poems shows how he attracts such a vast audience: by offering a pleasant tune sung in a pleasant way.… He is master of the everyday.… Collins reveals the unexpected within the ordinary. He peels back the surface of the humdrum to make the moment new.”

  —The Christian Science Monitor

  “Like a master jazz trumpeter, Collins takes quirky, imaginative leaps that are as stunning for their coherence as their originality.… Collins’s popularity hinges on the accessibility of his poems and their mildly subversive quality. The vast majority are written in the first person, in the colloquial, richly perceptive tradition of William Carlos Williams.… So obviously a virtuoso, Billy Collins is sure to bring many new readers to poetry.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  “To begin with, Collins is absolutely charming. He deserves every rose he’s flung these days.… His poems are irresistible. Deceptively simple and gentle, they wrap their friendly arms around you, tell you a joke, pour you a drink and then usher you into a banquet of images and ideas.”

  —Minneapolis Star-Tribune

  “[Collins] writes out … one of the major poetic scripts of our time: the one that finds transcendence in the ordinary, and sings hymns to the banal. The most obvious thing to say about Collins’s poetry is that it is funny, in an accessible and immediately familiar way. But his true poetic gift is something more than a sense of humor; it is a genuine, often debased, wit.… At its most powerful, this kind of wit is truly creative: if, as Emerson said, every word began life as a metaphor, wit resurrects the metaphor hiding in ordinary words.”

  —The New Republic

  “Collins has reached into so many unexplored corners that he has elevated the mundane, not out of proportion to the world, but to a place where it seems to have always belonged.”

  —The Miami Herald

  “Often, Collins will use the most mundane of subjects as a starting point for his work … but then he’ll take the poem to somewhere strange, marvelous and emotionally resonant.”

  —The Chicago Tribune

  “Because he is so accessible, there is a tendency to underrate Collins, but there is an intellectual challenge to most of his work.”

  —Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “[Collins’s] poetry insistently appeals to the mainstream. It brims with shared confidences, speaking softly and inviting the reader to come a little closer to the page. He does not write above or below his audience, but right at them. He engages us in intimate conversation.”

  —The Dallas Morning News

  “The surface structure of these poems appears simplistic, but subtle changes in tone or gesture move the reader from the mundane to the sublime.… The results are accessible, but not trite, comical but not laughable, and well crafted but not overly flamboyant.… This volume belongs in every library.”

  —Library Journal

  BILLY COLLINS is the author of six

  collections of poetry, including Sailing

  Alone Around the Room; Questions About

  Angels; The Art of Drowning; and Picnic,

  Lightning, and is the editor of Poetry

  180: A Turning Back to Poetry. He is a

  Distinguished Professor of English at

  Lehman College of the City

  University of New York. He was

  appointed Poet Laureate of the

  United States for 2001–2003.

  ALSO BY BILLY COLLINS

  Poetry 180 (editor)

  Picnic, Lightning

  The Best Cigarette (CD)

  The Art of Drowning

  Questions About Angels

  The Apple That Astonished Paris

  Video Poems

  Pokerface

  Nine Horses

  2002 Random House Trade Paperback Edition

  Copyright © 2001 by Billy Collins

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright

  Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks,

  an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New

  York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACKS and colophon are registered

  trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  This work was originally published in hardcover by Random House, Inc., in 2001.

  Poems from Picnic, Lightning, by Billy Collins, © 1998, are reprinted by

  permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press. Poems from The Art

  of Drowning, by Billy Collins, ©1995, are reprinted by permission of

  the University of Pittsburgh Press. Poems from Questions About Angels,

  by Billy Collins, © 1991, are reprinted by permission of the University

  of Pittsburgh Press. Poems from The Apple That Astonished Paris, by Billy

  Collins, are reprinted by permission of the University of Arkansas

  Press. Copyright 1988 by Billy Collins.

  Grateful acknowledgments are due to the editors of the following

  publications where some of these poems first appeared.

  The Atlantic Monthly, “The Iron Bridge,” “Man Listening to Disc,” “Snow

  Day”; Crab Orchard Review, “Serenade”; Field, “Idiomatic,” “Scotland”;

  Five Points, “Pavilion”; The Gettysburg Review, “Insomnia,” “The Three

  Wishes”; The Paris Review, “The Butterfly Effect”; Pif, “The Flight of the

  Reader”; Ploughshares, “The Only Day in Existence,” “Tomes”; Poetry,

  “Dharma,” “Jealousy,” “Madmen,” “November,” “Reading an Anthology

  of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty, I Pause to Admire the Length

  and Clarity of Their Titles,” “Sonnet”; The Southern Review, “The

  Waitress”; The Times Literary Supplement, “Ignorance”

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Collins, Billy.

  Sailing alone around the room: new and selected poems / Billy Collins.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-43174-5

  I. Title.

  PS3553.047478 S25 2000

  811′.54—DC21 99-052861

  Random House website address: www.atrandom.com

  v3.1

  IN MEMORIAM

  Katherine Collins (1901–1997)

  William S. Collins (1901–1994)

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Note to the Reader

  FROM The Apple That Astonished Paris (1988)

  ANOTHER REASON WHY I DON’T KEEP A GUN IN THE HOUSE

  WALKING ACROSS THE ATLANTIC

 
PLIGHT OF THE TROUBADOUR

  THE LESSON

  WINTER SYNTAX

  ADVICE TO WRITERS

  THE RIVAL POET

  INSOMNIA

  EARTHLING

  BOOKS

  BAR TIME

  MY NUMBER

  INTRODUCTION TO POETRY

  THE BROOKLYN MUSEUM OF ART

  SCHOOLSVILLE

  FROM Questions About Angels (1991)

  AMERICAN SONNET

  QUESTIONS ABOUT ANGELS

  A HISTORY OF WEATHER

  THE DEATH OF ALLEGORY

  FORGETFULNESS

  CANDLE HAT

  STUDENT OF CLOUDS

  THE DEAD

  THE MAN IN THE MOON

  THE WIRES OF THE NIGHT

  VADE MECUM

  NOT TOUCHING

  THE HISTORY TEACHER

  FIRST READER

  PURITY

  NOSTALGIA

  FROM The Art of Drowning (1995)

  CONSOLATION

  OSSO BUCO

  DIRECTIONS

  SUNDAY MORNING WITH THE SENSATIONAL NIGHTINGALES

  THE BEST CIGARETTE

  DAYS

  TUESDAY, JUNE 4, 1991

  CANADA

  ON TURNING TEN

  WORKSHOP

  MY HEART

  BUDAPEST

  DANCING TOWARD BETHLEHEM

  MONDAY MORNING

  CENTER

  DESIGN

  PINUP

  PIANO LESSONS

  THE BLUES

  MAN IN SPACE

  NIGHTCLUB

  SOME FINAL WORDS

  FROM Picnic, Lightning (1998)

  FISHING ON THE SUSQUEHANNA IN JULY

  TO A STRANGER BORN IN SOME DISTANT COUNTRY HUNDREDS OF YEARS FROM NOW

  I CHOP SOME PARSLEY WHILE LISTENING TO ART BLAKEY’S VERSION OF “THREE BLIND MICE”

  AFTERNOON WITH IRISH COWS

  MARGINALIA

  SOME DAYS

  PICNIC, LIGHTNING

  MORNING

  BONSAI

  SHOVELING SNOW WITH BUDDHA

  SNOW

  JAPAN

  VICTORIA’S SECRET

  LINES COMPOSED OVER THREE THOUSAND MILES FROM TINTERN ABBEY

  PARADELLE FOR SUSAN

  LINES LOST AMONG TREES

  TAKING OFF EMILY DICKINSON’S CLOTHES

  THE NIGHT HOUSE

  SPLITTING WOOD

  THE DEATH OF THE HAT

  PASSENGERS

  WHERE I LIVE

  ARISTOTLE

  New Poems

  DHARMA

  READING AN ANTHOLOGY OF CHINESE POEMS OF THE SUNG DYNASTY, I PAUSE TO ADMIRE THE LENGTH AND CLARITY OF THEIR TITLES

  SNOW DAY

  INSOMNIA

  MADMEN

  SONNET

  IDIOMATIC

  THE WAITRESS

  THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT

  SERENADE

  THE THREE WISHES

  PAVILION

  THE MOVIES

  JEALOUSY

  TOMES

  MAN LISTENING TO DISC

  SCOTLAND

  NOVEMBER

  THE IRON BRIDGE

  THE FLIGHT OF THE READER

  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.

  FROM

  The Apple That

  Astonished Paris

  (1988)

  Another Reason Why I Don’t

  Keep a Gun in the House

  The neighbors’ dog will not stop barking.

  He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark

  that he barks every time they leave the house.

  They must switch him on on their way out.

  The neighbors’ dog will not stop barking.

  I close all the windows in the house

  and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast

  but I can still hear him muffled under the music,

  barking, barking, barking,

  and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,

  his head raised confidently as if Beethoven

  had included a part for barking dog.

  When the record finally ends he is still barking,

  sitting there in the oboe section barking,

  his eyes fixed on the conductor who is

  entreating him with his baton

  while the other musicians listen in respectful

  silence to the famous barking dog solo,

  that endless coda that first established

  Beethoven as an innovative genius.

  Walking Across

  the Atlantic

  I wait for the holiday crowd to clear the beach

  before stepping onto the first wave.

  Soon I am walking across the Atlantic

  thinking about Spain,

  checking for whales, waterspouts.

  I feel the water holding up my shifting weight.

  Tonight I will sleep on its rocking surface.

  But for now I try to imagine what

  this must look like to the fish below,

  the bottoms of my feet appearing, disappearing.

  Plight of the Troubadour

  For a good hour I have been singing lays

  in langue d’oc to a woman who knows

  only langue d’oïl, an odd Picard dialect

  at that.

  The European love lyric is flourishing

  with every tremor of my voice,

  yet a friend has had to tap my shoulder

  to tell me she has not caught a word.

  My sentiments are tangled like kites

  in the branches of her incomprehension,

  and soon I will be lost in an anthology

  and poets will no longer wear hats like mine.

  Provence will be nothing more

  than a pink hue on a map or an answer on a test.

  And still the woman smiles over at me

  feigning this look of sisterly understanding.

  The Lesson

  In the morning when I found History

  snoring heavily on the couch,

  I took down his overcoat from the rack

  and placed its weight over my shoulder blades.

  It would protect me on the cold walk

  into the village for milk and the paper

  and I figured he would not mind,

  not after our long conversation the night before.

  How unexpected his blustering anger

  when I returned covered with icicles,

  the way he rummaged through the huge pockets

  making sure no major battle or English queen

  had fallen out and become lost in the deep snow.

  Winter Syntax

  A sentence starts out like a lone traveler

  heading into a blizzard at midnight,

  tilting into the wind, one arm shielding his face,

  the tails of his thin coat flapping behind him.

  There are easier ways of making sense,

  the connoisseurship of gesture, for example.

  You hold a girl’s face in your hands like a vase.

  You lift a gun from the glove compartment

  and toss it out the window into the desert heat.

  These cool moments are blazing with silence.

  The full moon makes sense. W
hen a cloud crosses it

  it becomes as eloquent as a bicycle leaning

  outside a drugstore or a dog who sleeps all afternoon

  in a corner of the couch.

  Bare branches in winter are a form of writing.

  The unclothed body is autobiography.

  Every lake is a vowel, every island a noun.

  But the traveler persists in his misery,

  struggling all night through the deepening snow,

  leaving a faint alphabet of bootprints

  on the white hills and the white floors of valleys,

  a message for field mice and passing crows.

  At dawn he will spot the vine of smoke

  rising from your chimney, and when he stands

  before you shivering, draped in sparkling frost,

  a smile will appear in the beard of icicles,

  and the man will express a complete thought.

  Advice to Writers

  Even if it keeps you up all night,

  wash down the walls and scrub the floor

  of your study before composing a syllable.

  Clean the place as if the Pope were on his way.

  Spotlessness is the niece of inspiration.

  The more you clean, the more brilliant

  your writing will be, so do not hesitate to take

  to the open fields to scour the undersides

  of rocks or swab in the dark forest

  upper branches, nests full of eggs.

  When you find your way back home

  and stow the sponges and brushes under the sink,

  you will behold in the light of dawn

  the immaculate altar of your desk,

  a clean surface in the middle of a clean world.

  From a small vase, sparkling blue, lift

  a yellow pencil, the sharpest of the bouquet,

  and cover pages with tiny sentences

  like long rows of devoted ants

  that followed you in from the woods.

  The Rival Poet

  The column of your book titles,

  always introducing your latest one,

  looms over me like Roman architecture.

  It is longer than the name

  of an Italian countess, longer

  than this poem will probably be.