Poetry for You and Me
Mid-winter evening,
alone at a sushi bar-
just me and this eel
- Billy Collins
It’s important, I feel, to have a favorite poet. It’s adds that important veneer of intellectual sophistication: I don’t just read poetry, I have a taste in poetry! None of that first-come-first-served bring-me-whatever-they’ve-got-at-the-buffet poetry reading for me!
And if you do decide on a favorite, it better not be someone that everyone’s heard of. Robert Frost? Emily Dickinson? Shakespeare, god forbid? That’s no sign of a cultured mind! That’s just things you learned in high-school.
But seriously, though, I do have some favorites. Some poets that seem to click more often than others. The first such was Frank O’Hara, with The Day Lady Died and Lana Turner Has Collapsed. But more recently, I’ve really started liking Billy Collins. It started with his Introduction to Poetry, which I’ve read in my Introduction to Poetry class, and today I found a new one of his, which I not only found wonderful, but it linked really well to an old post of mine, and it’s sentiment is one I identify with.
So this whole introduction has been, in effect, just a segue into Billy Collin’s Some Final Words, courtesy of 3QD. It’s lovely.