The Billy Collins Cookbook.
Billy Collins taught me
how to write
poetry
the same way Alison Roman
taught her disciples
to cook :
don’t be fussy.
have fun in the kitchen:
a small room doesn’t mean
small ideas;
experiment:
with different flavours, textures,
be funny, entertain.
I thought I could do that
Above all,
Billy Collins taught me:
be light.
You don’t have to stomp
to be heard.
Phillip Hodgins wrote one.
A great one about ibises.
They were a less scraggly, dissolute lot
than mine. Less louche.
I like the way he described them:
‘They had bodies the shape of caraway seeds,
and long black bills that curved like scythes’.
There is awe in his writing, respect.
He speaks of them flying in great flocks
casting deep shadows over the land
before descending like gods
beneficent as rain
aerating the soil, grubbing for bugs..
The farmer’s friend.
The Sacred Ibis of ancient Egypt.
I think I sold the ibises short.
Dambo.
I want to be a gangly recycle artist like Dambo,
the builder of wooden trolls.
Instead of discarded furniture, I use discarded poems,
snippets I’ve copied down in my commonplace books,
bits and pieces on suffering coz I know what’s that like now.
All the best poems have been written, Daz says.
He’s the one who wrote ‘The Parable of the Albino Pigeon’
so I listen.
“About suffering they were never wrong the Old Masters’,
says Auden, and I added:
while someone is bringing in the bins, watching ‘Bullet Train’
on Binge, or cleaning the car of dogs’ fur like my neighbour
who asks, Hey Bro, how’s it hanging? Do I even want to answer that?
‘This seeing the sick endears them to us, us too it endears’
says Hopkins in ‘Felix Randall’
who taught me empathy;
and those lines from Mary Oliver;
‘Someone I once loved
gave me a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this too was a gift’.
You can’t better that, Daz would say.
So is cancer a gift?
Anyhow I want to build my wooden trolls of poems
coz like Daz says, the best poems have all been written.
pic courtesy of pinterest
Les in Real Life,
The book of Les’ s poetry just fell off the desk
onto the polished wood floor.
At 783 pages it created quite a bang.
The millipede on the wall twitched.
The fluff sausage dogs in the corner jumped.
Les in real life was as hefty as his ‘Collected’.
He wrote poems celebrating the fat, his tribe,
including Quintets For Robert Morley,
the bushy-browed, triple-chinned English actor.
with the plummy voice.
There’s nothing plummy about our Les’s poetry.
It is wide of girth as Les himself, capacious,
containing jokes, puns, outlandish rhymes,
skew whiff metaphors., and clever insights.
It is written in Aussie English.
I bent down, picked dear old Les off the floor.
No need to go to gym tomorrow
lugging Les around.,
like the poem
the dreamy bus driver wrote
in ‘Paterson’
while idling at stop lights
or picking up passengers
the one about Ohio Blue Tip matches
in their sturdy little boxes
‘so sober and furious, ready to burst into flame’
as crafted as those of his hero
William Carlos Williams
the doctor who lived a few streets down
who wrote that famous poem
the red wheelbarrow glazed with rain
And me realizing you can write poems
about almost anything
even a red pencil sharpener
a bowl of berries with a barrowful of dreams
and finding out
that’s where Lou Costello came from too
Paterson, New Jersey.
There’s even a park named after him,
Lou Costello the chubby comedian who played alongside Bud Abbot,
the straight guy.
I used to watch those guys in the fun-house
Of the fifties,
frolicking with Frankenstein and The Wolf man.
But it was Lou Costello
I loved
The funny little fat guy
And that’s where he came from,
Paterson, New Jersey.
I am a thief
a thief of words.
Watch out for me.
I am never at rest.
My tools
are my ears, my eyes,
my prey
the streets of my city.
I scan for the unwary face,
the frown or smile
that betrays.
I listen into conversations,
arguments.
Priest-like
I elicit confessions.
I watch for
the unguarded sentence,
the revealing phrase.
I am the one with the notebook
opposite you on the bus;
the one with the slightly intent look
at your side.
Watch out for me.
I am the purloiner of language.
I snatch words
and use them as my own.
I am the poet, the novelist,
the thief of words
* from my second book, 1990. Longman Cheshire
It wasn’t the person from Porlock; it was my aunt
Who got on the bus, brought my poem to an end.
My notebook slumped on my lap as she told me
The long sad story of a friend.
When she got off I had my chance but this young bloke
Sat next to me, iPod blaring, hair swooped back.
It was the White Stripes live from Splendour.
How could I not listen ? It was Meg and Jack.
But then a cross-eyed biker got on, hair in a rat’s tail,
Skin graffitied with tatts. How could I not look?
His arms a graphic novel. Then a woman got on
Shouting into her mobile, angry as ‘The Angry Book’.
The sad sack on the other end was out for the count.
Luckily Coleridge didn’t board this bus
while he was dreaming ‘Kubla Khan’. He wouldn’t
have written a word. The poem would be dust.
I reckon if someone calls a book, ‘Come Closer and Listen’ they ought to have something to say.
Something vital, urgent, new. Provocative.
I leaned real close and listened. I wanted to be shocked out of my stodginess.
Take something away, to share with my mates at the pub Friday night.
Something revelatory.
But there was nothing.
Admittedly the poems are well crafted, And there are a few good ones
and even one stand-out poem but that’s it in 60 + pages.
But really it’s the same old stuff as in the previous 10 books.
God help us, we;re all in danger of repeating ourselves and if I do I pray someone
calls me out.
But it’s like I said of the Seinfeld book.
You coulda done better, Charles. You coulda done better.
Not a tower of giraffes
Nor a bloat of hippopotami
But a petulance of poets
Gathered in a side room
Of the library
Each champing at the bit
Wishing the bore out the front
Would bugger off and let someone
Worthy get on
Not really listening
But when their turn comes,
Oh the words, the words,
Such melody, such sweetness,
Was ever anything ….
Barely noticing that many who had already read
Had buggered off home or hit the bar.
I have heard Stand-Up Comics are much like this.
It is no laughing matter.
Don’t go morbid on me, I say.
It’s my mother coming out in you.
At least she walked it off.
Lighten up.
Tap into your jocular vein.
Give your funny bone a bump so it knows it’s alive.
Look at yourself in the mirror. Pull a funny face.
No more ‘Hittites’. Too dark, gloomy.
And no, you’re not putting ‘Icy Innuendoes’ up for another run.
Don’t even think about it.
Lighter stuff. A bit of fluff,
Think Hobbo. Think Don.
With their clown hats on.
Away moroseness. Morbidity.
You’ll be the death of me.
John Malone 