Home Learning Lesson 2

Well... Just touched on poems yesterday, and now I writing about poets... I think it is kind of too... fast...

Anyway, through my 1.5 days of learning poems... I will try my best to comment about a poet. The fact is that... I don't know any poets before this! Just read their names as I do some comprehension exercises but forgot almost the next minute... I never expect poems to be an easy task, thus I hope my comment about a poet is not that shallow.

So here we go, Billy Collins, Heard of him? I just knew him minutes ago. Anyway, yes, I chose him, ranked first in the "Most Popular Contemporary Poets"(2008). Contemporary, should be better than historical poets I believe. So I clicked him since people around the world agree.

Billy Collins was born in New York City in 1941. He is the author of several books of poetry, including Ballistics (2008), She Was Just Seventeen (2006), The Trouble with Poetry (2005); Nine Horses (2002); Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems (2001); Picnic, Lightning (1998); The Art of Drowning (1995), which was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; Questions About Angels (1991), which was selected by Edward Hirsch for the National Poetry Series; The Apple That Astonished Paris (1988); Video Poems (1980); and Pokerface (1977)....

Then the rest are all about big and famous awards and praises he received. I think I can know more about him through his poems.

Ballistics

When I came across the stop-action photograph

of a bullet that had just passed through a book—

the pages bulging with the force—

I forgot all about the marvels of photography

and began to wonder which book

the photographer had selected for the shot.

Many novels sprang to mind

including those of Raymond Chandler

where an extra bullet would hardly be noticed.

Non-fiction offered too many choices—

a history of Scottish lighthouses,

a biography of Joan of Arc and so forth.

Or it could be an anthology of medieval literature,

the bullet having just beheaded Sir Gawain

and pierced the motley band of pilgrims.

But later, as I was drifting off to sleep,

I realized that the executed book

was a recent book of poems written

by someone of whom I was not fond

and that the bullet must have passed through

his writing with little resistance

and then through the author’s photograph,

through the beard, the round glasses,

and the special poet’s hat he likes to wear.

Flames

Smokey the Bear heads

into the autumn woods

with a red can of gasoline

and a box of wooden matches.

His ranger's hat is cocked

at a disturbing angle.

His brown fur gleams

under the high sun

as his paws, the size

of catcher's mitts,

crackle into the distance.

He is sick of dispensing

warnings to the careless,

the half-wit camper,

the dumbbell hiker.

He is going to show them

how a professional does it.

What Love Does

A fine thing, or so it sounds

on the radio in the summer

with all the windows rolled down.

Yet it pierces not only the heart

but the eyeball and the scrotum

and the little target of the nipple with arrows.

It turns everything into a symbol

like a storm that breaks loose

in the final chapter of a long novel.

And it may add sparkle to a morning,

or deepen a night

when the bed is ringed with fire.

It teaches you new joys

and new maneuvers—

the takedown, the reversal, the escape.

But mostly it comes and goes,

a bee visiting the center

of one flower, then another.

Even as the ink is drying

on her name, it is off

to visit someone in another city,

a city with two steeples,

rows of brick chimney pots,

and a school with a tree-lined entrance.

It will travel through the night to get there,

and it will arrive like an archangel

through a gate no one ever noticed before.

From what I've read... I think that Billy Collins exaggerates what he is writing, not in a negative way, (should I call it hyberpole?) He is like having a strong grasp and control of language and can elaborate his topic by using irrelevant and big things yet turns out to be meaningful when arranged by him. Just like "What Love Does". I love that. By using disastrous and heavy words yet explained everything love can do, showed the capability of love.

As I said, poems are definitely not easy and I belive I need and will receive more knowledge on them before carrying out big tasks. I hope I can do way better than this comment after learning poems.

Websites I visited:http://poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/278

http://dspace.gsu.edu/bitstream/2197/191/21/21_collins.pdf

http://www.poemhunter.com/billy-collins/

I welcome all comments, especially from those who knows about Billy Collins.