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Monday, July 21, 2003
posted by gbarto at 2:31 AM:
Cicero takes aim at the BBC's characterization of our Poet Laureate as "hugely popular," suggesting that the last popular poet was Frost. But he doesn't say whether this is a good thing. We here at the TurkeyBlog find it unfortunate. Billy Collins is a pretty damned good poet and a good match for the president under whom he serves. Unlike the typical professor poet, he writes neither pretentious and incomprehensible crap designed to convince other professors of his cleverness nor angst-ridden, Updikean dirges on the horrors of having to work 6 hours a week and attend a monthly meeting to keep from losing tenure. His poems are plainspoken little stories in forms that do the best of what our oldest verse did when everything was written in verse. One can see the man having had a bad illness and writing "Timor mortis conturbat me" only he wouldn't have mucked about with the Latin. One can even imagine him writing something like Leigh Hunt's "Jenny Kissed me," though the rhyme probably would have been looser or discarded for such a light set piece. In any case, Picnic, Lightning makes for an amusing afternoon. I haven't read any of the volumes in full, but what I've seen has likewise been charming and amusing for the most part. Well worth a look.* * *
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