Likely Stories: Five Years in the Making

One of the hardest questions for an avid reader is “What’s your favorite book?”  The task is no easier to come up with a list of my favorites over the five years of Likely Stories.  So, I decided to pick two from each reading year.  

2009-10 – Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín.  Tóibín’s prose weaves a serene tale of life in Ireland and Brooklyn, NY.  The main character Eilis matures quickly after her arrival and develops a relationship with a young man she meets at a dance.  Toibin writes lovely prose.  And  Ballistics by Billy Collins.  This collection, by my favorite poet, sparkles with all the wit and humor, which characterizes his poetry.

2010-11 – Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff.  Schiff has written one of the most entertaining biographies I have ever read.  She brings the Queen of the Nile into sharp focus with all her strengths and weaknesses. Also, The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery.  Another writer with elegant and beautiful prose, which tells the story of a close bond between a loner and a young girl who share a love of books and reading.

2011-12 – The Radetsky March by Joseph Roth.  The thread which ties this list together has emerged: spectacular, beautiful, enchanting prose.  This novel, set during the Napoleonic Wars might not seem interesting, but that would be a mistake on any reader’s part.  Next, The Golden Droplet by Michel Tournier.  This story of a young girl’s search for a woman who took her photograph excites, saddens, and pleases on every page.

2012-13 -- The Red and the Green by Iris Murdoch.  Iris Murdoch is one of my top three authors.  Her novels have large casts of characters with intricate plots.  Nearly every one of her novels is a masterpiece.  And, Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.  This first volume in a trilogy covers the life and loves of the Tudor Court of Henry VIII.  This Booker Prize Winner was followed by the same award for part two, Bring Up the Bodies.  Part three is due out sometime in 2015.  I can’t wait.

2013-14 – Now we come to my 5^th year of sharing my love for fine literature with my dedicated and faithful listeners.  I have declared a dead heat between Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch and Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84.  Goldfinch is one of the finest novels I have ever read.  Despite its length, it was a fast read – a page turner some might say – about a young man who loses his mother in a terrorist attack, but new friends place him on a much more secure path to adulthood.  This is a must read.  And finally, Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 is another must read.  Again, I urge readers not to allow the length – 933 pages – to deter from reading this fascinating story of two children, who share a secret bond neither of them fully understands.  Twenty years after their single encounter, they search for each other.

--Chiron, 8/21/14

Aimless Love by Billy Collins

Billy Collins is far and away my favorite poet.  His simple language, profound insights, and humorous poems are my ideal, My goal is to write a poem which causes a reader to think, “that reminds me of Billy Collins.”  Whenever Collins comes out with a new volume of poetry, I buy and devour a it as quickly as I can.  Published this month, Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems is his tenth collection.

In this case I immediately flipped to the last section containing the new poems.  Fifty nuggets awaited my attention.  My favorite is “Foundling.”  “How unusual to be living a life of continual self-expression, / jotting down little things, / noticing a leaf being carried down a stream, / then wondering what will become of me, // and finally to work alone under a lamp / as if everything depended on this, / groping blindly down a page, like someone lost in a forest. // And to think it all began one night / on the steps of a nunnery / where I lay gazing up from a sewing basket, / which was doubling for a proper baby carrier, // staring into the turbulent winter sky, too young to wonder about anything / including my recent abandonment-- / but it was there that I committed // my first act of self-expression, / sticking out my infant tongue / and receiving in return (I can see it now) / a large, pristine snowflake much like any other” (175).

His nature poems also affect me deeply.  In “Osprey,” Collins sketches a scene I have lived through myself many times.  He writes, “Oh, large brown, thickly-feathered creature / with a distinctive white head, / you, perched on the top branch / of a tree near the lake shore, // as soon as I guide this boat back to the dock / and walk up the grassy path to the house, / before I unzip my windbreaker / and lift the binoculars from around my neck, // before I wash the gasoline from my hands, / before I tell anyone I am back, / and before I hang the ignition key on its nail, / or pour myself a drink-- // I’m thinking a vodka soda with lemon-- / I will look you up in my / illustrated guide to North American birds / and I promise I will learn what you are called” (208).

Collins has written a number of poems about writing and poetry, and this volume contains one about reading.  The title is “Reader,” and he wrote: “Looker, gazer, skimmer, skipper, / thumb-licking page turner, peruser, / you getting your print-fix for the day, pencil chewer, not taker, marginalianist / with your checks and X’s / firs-timer or revisiter, / browser, speedster, English Major, / flight-ready girl, melancholy boy, / invisible companion, thief, blind date, perfect stranger-- // that is me rushing to the window / to see if it’s you passing under the shade trees /  with a baby carriage or a dog on a leash, / me picking up the phone / to imagine your unimaginable number, me standing by a map of the world / wondering where you are-- / alone on a bench in a train station / or falling asleep, the book sliding to the floor?” (xix).

Aimless Love by Billy Collins is a wonderful way to introduce yourself to his work.  I bet you will soon find a collection of all his volumes of poetry, silently standing guard amid the Cs on a bookshelf, patiently awaiting your call.  5 stars 

--Chiron, 10/28/13

Horoscopes for the Dead by Billy Collins

Whenever a new collection of poetry by Billy Collins appears, I drop everything on my TBR list and read. I have already been through this volume three times, and I absolutely love nearly every poem in it.

I met Mr. Collins last year in Louisville, KY, and had him sign a paperback copy of the collection, Picnic, Lightening, which has my favorite Collins poem in it, “Shoveling Snow with the Buddha.” As I have written before, if I can ever write a poem that someone who knows says, “It reminds me of Billy Collins,” I will consider myself a poet.

About 20 poems are starred, and it was quite a struggle to emerge with one to reproduce here, but I did it. “Two Creatures” represents everything I love about poetry, everything I love about Billy Collins, and everything I aspire to in my own work:

"The last time I looked, the dog was lying
on the freshly cut grass
but now she has moved under the picnic table.

I wonder what causes her to shift
from one place to another,
to get up for no apparent reason from her spot

by the stove, scratch one ear,
then relocate, slumping down
on the other side of the room by the big window,

or I will see her hop onto the couch to nap
then later find her down
on the Turkish carpet, her nose in the fringe.

The moon rolls across the night sky
and stops to peer down on the earth,
and the dog rolls through these rooms

and onto the lawn, pausing here and there
to sleep or to stare up at me, head in her paws,
to consider the scentless pen in my hand

or the open book on my lap.
And because her eyes always follow me,
she must wonder, too, why

I shift from place to place,
from the couch to the sink
or the pencil sharpener on the wall –

two creatures bound by the wonderment
though unlike her, I have never once worried
after letting her out the back door

that she would take off in the car
and leave me to die
behind the solid locked doors of this house." (53-54)

No comment necessary. If you read this and don’t get it, I am sorry. Keep trying. Perhaps one day, it will settle into your mind, and you will know. 5 stars.

--Chiron, 5/1/11

Ballistics by Billy Collins

I went to the bookstore today -- not to buy anything, just to have a look around. I came away with my fourth copy of Mudbound, the new paperback, and I was surprised at the amber cover. I also got another novel and a collection of humorous travel stories.

Billy Collins' poetry makes me look at the ordinary, the every day, and see symmetrical beauty in the simple things of everyday life. I sailed through this new volume -- twice already -- and I am not the least bit disappointed.

His simple language, clever phrases, and delightful, humorous, and thought-provoking images give me more pleasure than any poetry I have ever read.

I needed this pick-me-up, because I finished teaching King Lear in class today, and the students were bored. I know they didn't read it. They could not see the power of the language, the depth of the characters, the intense fractured relationships.

They would declare the poems too simple and Hillary Jordan's Mudbound too long. They would miss the power of the language, the descriptions, the intense fractured society of Jim Crow Mississippi in 1945. They would be the poorer for it.

But I have another Billy Collins on my shelf, and I can take him and his words for a voyage to a wonderful place -- simple, quiet, reflective. Or I can hunker down with Laura, and Hap, and Ronsel on that mudbound farm in the Mississippi delta anytime I want.

Billy Collins has done it again. I am only going to tease you with a few stanzas from the first poem in the book, "August in Paris." The poet pauses to look over the shoulder of a sidewalk painter and wonders,

"But where are you, reader,
who have not paused in your walk
to look over my shoulder
to see what I am jotting in this notebook?

Alone in this city,
I sometimes wonder what you look like,
if you are wearing a flannel shirt
or a wraparound blue skirt held together with a pin.

But every time I turn around
you have fled through a crease in the air
to a quiet room where the shutters are closed
against the heat of the afternoon,
where there is only the sound of your breathing
and every so often, the tuning of a page" (3).

Now go get your own, because I am looking over Billy's shoulder, seeing the memories of my trips to Paris, stopping to watch a mime, a street performer, or a painter on a folding chair, delicately daubing paint on a small canvas. 5 stars.

--Chiron, 3/20/09

Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins

Wallace Stevens once wrote, when discussing the subject matter of poetry, that it is not a “collection of solid, static objects extended in space” but rather the life that is lived in the scene that it composes. He continues, “so reality is not that external scene but the life that is lived in it. Reality is things as they are.” I believe Stevens has touched on an important aspect of poetry for me, and that Billy Collins exemplifies this dictum as well as any poet writing today.

We do not have to look far in Sailing Alone Around the Room, a selection of Collins’ work from several of his books, which also includes some “new poems.” My favorite Collins’ poem is a good place to start. “Shoveling Snow with the Buddha” takes the mundane chore of clearing a driveway of new fallen snow. The narrator is joined in the task by the Buddha. “…here we are working our way down the driveway / one shovelful at a time” (LL 13-14). There is nothing fancy here, no deep meaning, but the gentle language is infused with the reality of two people shoveling. The reader takes up the image and adds the cold, the strenuous nature of the task, as well as the sense of satisfaction that comes as they approach the end of the drive. Hardly anything could be more realistic. Having shoveled many sidewalks for quarters as a young boy, these lines instantly carry me back to my early years.

Another example that strikes me as particularly realistic, is “On Turning Ten,” Collins counts the years with mileposts in a child’s dreams of the future:

…I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince. (LL 12-16)

Those years easily come back to me with Collins’ lyrical and flowing style. I need only substitute other dreams -- an archaeologist, a pilot, a sailboat captain – for transportation to those innocent days.

If you are unfamiliar with Billy Collins, this volume is a great place to start. When I first bought this book, I quickly read through it, but then I started over and read them one at a time. Occasionally, I would linger on a favorite poem for a second, third, or even a fourth read before moving on. You will be as enchanted as I was, and you will go out and buy the rest of Collins’ books for full servings only hinted at in this fine collection. Five stars.

--Chiron, 5/7/08