Former Poet Laureate says country needs better poets

By M. Scott Carter

LONE WOLF — Billy Collins unwound the tangled earbuds from his iPod and stretched the wires across the dark wooden table in the library. He placed the music player next to a spiral notebook, then slowly rolled the wires in a small tight circle.

“I only have about 37 songs on this thing,” he said. “Some John Lee Hooker. Some Bob Dylan. A little ’50s doo-wop.” The lack of music isn’t that big of an issue, because Collins’ iPod doesn’t have to work hard; it doesn’t get a lot of use.

“I just use it to tune out the noise,” he said; noise created by humans in places such as airports.

Technology isn’t Billy Collins’ thing.

His cellphone is turned off and the iPod remains untouched since its earbuds were freed from their tangles. Instead, the former poet laureate of the United States picks up his ink pen, opens his notebook and scribbles a few lines.

And for the next 30 minutes or so, he speaks of jazz and writing and good poetry and bad poetry and even of the stark beauty of Oklahoma.

Yes, Billy Collins speaks well.

But he writes better.

“I was listening to Thelonious Monk coming out here,” he said. “I’ve even learned a couple of his songs, but I would never play them in front of anyone. Because I don’t believe anyone can really play Thelonious. He was too unique. I think trying to play that is a form of trespassing.”

And while trying to play Monk might seem like a violation, for Collins — a New York native — writing poetry which evokes images of jazz and rain and snow and even household items is his life’s work.

Named a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library, a Guggenheim fellow, the poet laureate of New York, and yes, poet laureate of the United States for 2001 through 2003, Collins has earned almost every prize offered in the world of poetry.

But since June 13, he’s been an Oklahoman.

Chosen as a member of the faculty of the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute, Collins has spent the past week sharing his experience with a select group of high school students. Last week, Collins spoke to the entire group during a poetry reading at the Kerr Performing Arts Center.

Collins’ hour-long performance featured him reading several of his works and, when finished, generated a spontanious standing ovation.

“Coming here has been fascinating,” he said. “It’s sort of an ‘end-of-the-line’ experience.” By that, Collins said he was speaking of the lodge’s remote location. “There’s a railroad line here, but it only goes one way, to ship wheat out. And there’s only one road into the lodge. It’s like Oklahoma’s Shangri-la. This beautiful, stark place.”

A place that’s also inspiring. “There’s a rustic beauty here. I’ve recently been on the phone trying to describe southwestern Oklahoma to my friends.”

Still, while Billy Collins found Quartz Mountain particularly suited to his creative needs, he’s less excited by the poetry the rest of the country has produced.

“One of the reasons people don’t read as much poetry anymore is the fault of the poets,” he said. “It’s not the public’s fault. There’s an awful lot of bad poetry out there. I’d say about 87 percent of the poetry in America isn’t worth reading.”

It’s the other 13 percent, Collins said, that he lives for. “Poetry should be transparent. Transparent poems tend to teach themselves.”

Or those poems should say something about the state of the poet and his environment.

For Collins, that philosophy bubbled to the surface when he was asked, as poet laureate, to write a poem commemorating the first anniversary of the terrorists’ attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

“I’ve only been asked to write two poems in my life,” he said. “One was on the 300th anniversary of Trinity School and the other was a request by Congress commemorating the anniversary of the 9-11.”

Initially, Collins said, he turned down the request.

“I didn’t want to,” he said. “But, later, as I thought about it, it disturbed me that I didn’t feel I was up to the challenge.”

Collins changed his mind. He said he took advantage of two literary devices — the form of a eulogy and the alphabet — to build his work. “I needed the eulogy and the alphabet, I needed those as a frame for the poem.”

Later, Collins read his work to a joint session of Congress. “I remember the tears running down Senator Patrick Moynihan’s face. It was an interesting way to see the country’s politicans.”

It was in moments like those, Collins said, that he understood the power of the poem.

But even with his assent, several best-selling books and a closet full of awards, Collins continues to write — technology remains more of a fascination than a tool.

And in his writing, he continually goes back to his roots — a pen, a piece of paper and a simple idea. “For me, the future is basically the next poem. It’s always been that way. It’s always been one poem at a time.”

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