Seduction, sensuality or stupefying normality?

If you type ‘Billy Collins’ into Google you often come up with articles of women expressing their love for him: ‘Why I fell in love with Billy Collins.’ For some reason, however, after reading his collection called Taking off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes, I didn’t get the impression that he talks about them as much as they are buzzing about him. However, in this essay I will be evaluating how he brings out the female characters in his poems and, if he does, how he possibly relates to these.

The title of the collection immediately catches your attention as something out of the ordinary, especially if you don’t know who Emily Dickinson was. Also the fact that one of the poems in the first section is called Victoria’s Secret is worrying since Victoria’s Secret is a lingerie brand. In fact these are the only two poems in the whole collection that are obviously about women. Could it be that Collins was disrespectful, or even vulgar? Fortunately, it turned out to not be so, since upon closer inspection it became clear neither of the poems were vulgar or lurid.

To start with it is important to look into what these two poems are actually about, before we can make a clear judgement on what Collins was trying to achieve in writing them. In Taking off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes, Collins describes how he feels when he reads one of her poems, casually dropping in lines from her various poems, like ‘that Hope has feathers.’ This in particular makes it clearer that he is talking about her in a slightly more understanding or kind sense than what we think when we see the title. He also ‘cannot tell [us] everything – ’ which gives a worried reader some relief. This doesn’t mean that he doesn’t tell us anything. In fact, the vivid imagery he poses us with when he says he was ‘sailing towards the iceberg of her nakedness’ or how ‘it was like riding a swan into the night’ does add a sense of sexual action to his poem. It could be that this is just Collins’ way of describing how close to her one feels after reading one of her poems, as if you have wandered into the midst of her ‘naked’ mind.

Unfortunately, the same innocent unknowingness cannot be said of Victoria’s Secret. In this poem Collins clearly describes the facial expressions and attire of several models in a Victoria’s Secret catalogue. In doing so he uses his own interpretations of what the models would be feeling or thinking at the time the picture was taken, or possibly what he thinks the purpose of the image was to give us an even clearer image of what he is seeing in front of him. He doesn’t seem to think the images are surprising at all, or possibly he doesn’t feel that they should be taken as vulgar. He describes the clothes they are wearing in a way that makes it feel as if they are beautiful and striking at the same time – which I believe they are if you look at the images they post on their website. The women’s’ ‘flame stitch halter top,’ ‘organza trimmed/whisperweight camisole,’ or ‘satin charmeuse top’ are each illustrated with a different persona. There are eight models, each unique.

Music is a persistent theme when Billy Collins talks about anything, but he definitely links it to women in most of the poems they are put into. The first model, in the first stanza, is ‘persistent’ and the second ‘cannot hide the shadow of annoyance in her brow.’ The second one is the one we see Billy’s interest rise for, she makes a comment on his music, which is ‘loud’ and she doesn't seem to like it. The fifth model even is ‘easier to take’ because she looks ‘as if she were listening to a medley of lullabies playing faintly on a music box.’ Jazz, or music in general, seem to link to women more often in his poetry, in fact Jazz seems to link to everything. Even the title of I chopped some parsley while listening to Art Blakey’s version of Three Blind Mice being an obvious one. In his poem Questions About Angels he in particular links women with Jazz, mentioning ‘one female angel dancing alone in her stocking feet, a small jazz combo working in the background.’  This pure image – pure because of the angel that is linked with innocence – gives us a view of Billy Collins that comes up in Victoria’s Secret with the fifth model. This is a more innocent or even intimate image since neither of these women know they are being ‘watched’ by the reader while they listen to, and thoroughly enjoy, their music. This same purely beautiful and innocent image is seen again in Marginalia where Collins shows us into his imagination of a young girl who is ‘in love’ and writing comments in her literature books to tell the world.

Not all the models give a happy image of purity and innocence, the first, ‘persistent’ one and the second annoyed one are only the confusing mix of emotions that Collins feels when looking through the catalogue. The third is surprised because his imaginary character has just burst open the door to her bedroom while at the same time ‘stepped on a tack.’ She doesn’t seem happy to see him, but neither does the fourth one who ‘is arching her eyebrow slightly,’ testing him. The fifth one is the innocent and musical one while the sixth one brings us into the more sensual area of a lingerie catalogue. She is reclining ‘catlike on a couch,’ an image that is immediately related to almost pornographic sights. As a reader you start to think that Collins may not be the charming man we think he is until we remember that this is just a description of what he is seeing, he isn’t imagining a lady lying seductively on a couch, nor is he actually describing a time when he was with a lady lying seductively on a couch. He is simply describing a photograph.

The idea that what he is doing is not what it seems is also made clearer by the structure of the poem. Each model has an allocated paragraph, no picture flowing over the stanzas. None of them rhyme either so it is as if he is trying to paint a perfect picture of his morning as he opens the mail, a stream of consciousness of his day to day life. It just so happens that this particular distraction is a piece of mail that he will most probably never use again – ‘But this is already too much./Who has the time to linger on these delicate/lures, these once unmentionable things?’ It could thought that he is saying he must go on with his day and the ‘list of things [he has] to do’ while at the same time he doesn't want to do these things, the lingerie just being his distraction. 

Conclusively, I don’t think it would be fair to judge this collection ‘by its title,’ since it is quite clear that Billy Collins is not trying to achieve an image of a naked and seductive woman, despite two of his poems being about women in their undergarments. Neither of these poems are really ‘about’ women’s sensual side, but both, as per usual with Billy Collins, just a description of something he may believe everyone goes through in their day-to-day affairs.