Billy Collins is a surgeon. With a stable and exact hand, Collins cuts through the superficial skin of quixotic reality and delves ever-so-deep into the pulsing heart of poetry. In his latest book, Horoscopes for the Dead, Collins does not wrestle with life, death, and the minutiae in between, but he explores the boundaries of existence with a precision that only a poet could possess, and he does so with the narrative and paternal voice so familiar throughout all of his work. In this sense, then, Horoscopes for the Dead is a compendium of obituaries for the living: the recording and announcing of death’s inconvenient yet conciliate inevitability.
Collins has the Poetic Eye. He sees the world through an aesthetic that carries not only artistic weight, but a contemplative weight as well. Indeed, even when pondering cumbersome ideas like death does Collins employ such grace in capturing its essence; a grace that makes death almost worthwhile. And, after reading any of Collins poetry, (especially Horoscopes for the Dead) does the reader not only appreciate life, but he or she learns a little more about how to look at it while awaiting the swift and venerable pale horse.
It is mentioned above that Billy Collins the poet uses the contemplative Poetic Eye. This means that Collins not only views the world in a unique way, but also that he views the very words he uses to describe the world in such a manner. Collins’ diction is not only accessible and efficient, but it is more complex than one might be inclined to think. The word “horoscope,” for instance, can mean two related yet disparate things. A horoscope can be an astrological forecast, that is, the prescription of an individual’s behavior based upon the arrangement of the celestial bodies at his or her birth. On the other hand, a horoscope can be a schematic of planetary relationships, i.e., a map, (which is what Collins’ new book tends to appear as). Though distorted somewhat by pop culture, the word horoscope is home to some very complex ideas, and this is why such a word is appropriate for the title of Collins’ new book: Horoscopes for the Dead.
One gets a sense that the most prominent theme of the book pertains to death: coping with it, coming to terms with its inevitability, and relying on it to balance out the universe. So, what a paradoxical yet apropos book title Collins has given his readers for such a collection of multifaceted ideas; it gives the readers a brief insight of what is to come: a complex, yet cutting beauty.
Moreover, even the titles of poems themselves point to meditations of death. Poems like “Hell” and “Genesis” seem to hint at the supernatural, just like “Grave” and “Cemetery Ride” do the same. However, Collins’ style is anything but dogmatic. He does not jargonize his poems, nor does he extend a metaphor to the point of multiform ambiguity, (though he is apt to metaphorical extension as most poets are). Instead, Collins utilizes simple language to convey great truths; he uses a concise and tight diction while leaving a vast hermeneutic space in which the reader can easily maneuver. The reader is right to interpret each poem as he or she may, (though Collins might take this sentence the wrong way). One can either infer an elaborate hierarchy of meaning, or one can follow a single thread through each poem. Regardless of how one might interpret Collins, we all watch and listen as he weaves a great metaphysical tapestry while using the most delicate of silken thread.
Though watching (reading) the images of poetry is certainly important, listening is equally so. While Collins writes in free verse, it is quite obvious that each poem (albeit some more than others) contains a sort of variable musicality. In short, something metrical resides in each poem. And, in the poem “Watercoloring,” (a poem where the painter and poet unite) does such musicality become immediately apparent:
The sky began to tilt,
a shift of light toward the higher clouds,
so I seized my brush
and dipped my little cup in the stream, (42)
The above stanza makes one want to snap along and tap one’s foot. The six syllables in the first line sets up a sort of cadence. Though no real concrete syllabic measure exists, a rhythmic one indeed does; it’s song-like. For, it resonates in the inner-ear when read aloud, just as it stirs the soul when read quietly to oneself, and as the poem continues, so does the rhythmic quality along with it:
but once I streaked the paper gray
with a hint of green,
water began to slide down the page,
rivulets looking for a river.
This particular stanza takes on the characteristics of a song-verse, which also contributes to the music of the poem. Not only does the stanza seem rhythmic, but it has similar complementary word-sounds as well. The slant rhyme between “gray” and “page” urges the song-like quality further on, not to mention the alliteration of the last line with “rivulets” and “river.” Such formal components are common throughout Collins’ work in general, but it is how he uses such elements that sets him apart from the rest: when coupled with a simple yet cutting diction, the musical elements help to create a synergy of poetic potency and a pulsing heartbeat.
The next intriguing aspect of “Watercoloring” is its haiku-like quality. Though the poem does not necessarily take the form of haiku, its essence is definite and rich. Like virtually all of Collins’ poetry, one can sense a place in Nature, and this is the very spirit of both “Watercoloring” as well as haiku per se: perception of one’s immediate location in space and time. Collins takes it a bit further, though, for Nature here is not just babbling brooks or tilted skies, but the very milieu in which these things are an integral part. Collins develops and employs his own aesthetic, whereby he reveals to the reader the seemingly eternal connections of Nature and the psychological frames used to translate such connections into a meaningful human understanding of them. In short, Collins has just extended the metaphor, though with poetic grace and verisimilitude.
Another prime example of this extension is made clear in the poem “Grave,” where the essence of haiku is also equally clear:
What do you think of my new glasses
I asked as I stood under a shade tree
before the joined grave of my parents
and what followed was a long silence
that descended on the rows of the dead
and on the fields and the woods beyond, (3)
In the above quotation, Collins is wrestling with not only the absence of his parents, but he is wrestling with that ubiquitous intangible that haunts every human being, that is, non-existence. To merely say that Collins wrestles with death is not only cliché, but a disservice to the very craftsmanship of his poetry. He imagines the being of his parents (as they were in space and time) and balances that with what must come after such being has left: “one of the hundred kinds of silence”.
Furthermore, “Grave” is a poem that best represents the essence of haiku mentioned above, for the Zen-like meditation on silence speaks volumes of such essence, and perhaps the very last stanza is the best example of this. Collins reveals to the reader one such meditative-silence: “and the Silence of the Lotus,/cousin to the Silence of the Temple Bell/only deeper and softer, like petals, at its farthest edges” (4). This is the great existential quandary that Collins is trying to elucidate through the medium of poetry: what is death, and what comes after it? Again, this great question is neither cliché, nor is it dogmatic. Instead, Collins presents this question with such elegance that the reader is left in wonderment rather than confusion.
From a surgeon, to a master-composer, to a Horace-like painter of poetry, Billy Collins can be described as many things. And, Horoscopes for the Dead is a great swath of representative poetry to support such assertions. Though such a title is seemingly grim, and though the titles of some of the included poems also seem grim and final, this is not entirely the case. For, this is a collection of contemplation; a collection of ideas meditating upon what happens in that great, unwritten In-Between. Horoscopes for the Dead, then, by no means is a conclusion, but it is an on-going conversation, that is, a painstaking dialectic of the reflective present. In other words, though the majority of Horoscopes for the Dead deals with death and its expected eventuality, it is a call to life, it is a written account of death’s record, and it is the piercing announcement that we all must make that journey some day. In this sense, then, Horoscopes for the Dead is really just Billy Collins’ way of writing obituaries for the living.
Works Cited
Collins, Billy. Horoscopes for the Dead: Poems. New York: RandomHouse, 2011. Print.
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