TRAVELLING WITH YOUR MIND THROUGH BILLY COLLINS.

Ex poet laureate Billy Collins is not a deficient poet who is going to go on about one theme like religion or women or maybe even historiography of an area. What makes Billy Collins so special especially in his collection of poems, Taking off Emily Dickinson’s clothes, is his robust manner of themes.  The theme that captured me the most and furthermore most consistent in all his poems is travel.

Am going to focus on a number of poems by Billy Collins, those that directly point to literal travel and contemplative poems.My perspective of contemplating is travelling with the mind, because for that one precise moment you think of that specific place your mind travels to that place and the end result is being there mentally but not physically.

Walking across the Atlantic, is a unique example and why I am going to discuss that first and quote it in its entirety.

 ‘I wait for the holiday crowd to clear the beach
 before stepping onto the first wave.

 Soon I am walking across the Atlantic
 thinking about Spain,
 checking for whales, waterspouts.

 I feel the water holding up my shifting weight.
 Tonight I will sleep on its rocking surface.

 But for now I try to imagine what
 this must look like to the fish below,
 the bottoms of my feet appearing, disappearing.’

In the first stanza Billy Collins stresses on the importance of being alone, in most of his poems he seems very reclusive. He waits ‘for the holiday crowd to clear the beach.’ Billy Collins has consistently stressed on the importance of the first sentence in all his poems whenever he is interviewed. The significance of being alone is then explored with the contemplating and mind travel in the second stanza. Furthermore the effect solitude has on one's imagination. It seems as if he wouldn't be able to contemplate if the ‘holiday crowd’ were still in the water. But with their exclusion he manages to travel, he manages to ‘walk across the Atlantic, and think about ‘Spain,’ or even search for marine life, ‘whales and waterspouts.’ The third and final stanza Billy Collins talks about the importance of perspectives. He notices that even when contemplating one always includes the perspectives of others and that they play a vital role. Which may make you cautious of your travel or influence you negatively and you may stop travelling. However it can influence you positively and you continue your travel with the energy that was perhaps maybe lacking before.

Billy Collins also travels with the mind in the poem, Fishing on the Susquehanna in July. The structure of the poem is neat with three lines per stanza and the first or last line of each stanza are usually longer except on the second, fourth and fifth stanza. Which brings to mind the perspective of one travelling on a focused mind with what he has in mind and on occasions he zones out and loses the itty bitty details that influence the imagination of one reader. Just as how the poet ‘blinked and moved on,’ affecting his image of fishing on the Susquehanna River. The contemplating nature of the poem is so realistic that one can simply think that the poet really has been to fishing on the Susquehanna. With the image of the, ‘blue-cloud ruffled sky/ dense trees along the banks/and a fellow with a red bandana/…small, green/flat bottom boat/holding the thin whip of a pole/’ One can simply forget that Billy Collins is looking at a painting in ‘a museum in Philadelphia.’ Through this poem Billy Collins directly addresses the reader and due to this it is so easy to immerse yourself into his image and join him on the Susquehanna. A similar poem to Fishing on the Susquehanna in July, is American sonnet, where Billy Collins once again travels with his mind. The structure is similar with a neat form of three lines per stanza and the same sort of indented formula in his writing, where except on a few occasions the first or the last line are usually longer than the middle line, depicting this sort of a concave shape on each stanza.

To add on in this poem Billy Collins talks about the American. How an American doesn't,’ speak like Petrarch or wear a hat like Spenser.’ Upon the first reading one can easily say that it’s just a poem of the definition of the normal American and how he carries himself. However with Billy Collins there’s never just a poem. In this poem he contemplates/travels with the mind and compares the American to ‘Petrarch’ an Italian scholar and poet in renaissance Italy. Moreover he compares an American to ‘Spenser,’ a most likely British fashion mogul. TO add on through his contemplating he compares the normal Joe American to an ‘Elizabethan heliocentric eyes.’ Billy Collins just as similar as he draws the reader into his contemplations in, ‘Fishing on the Susquehanna’ he does the same in this poem. Where he fully douses the reader into travel then brings him/her back to reality when he hints to the reader that he was,’ walking back from the mailbox.’

To add on Billy Collins not only travels with the mind. In some poems Billy Collins portrays himself as a globetrotter (though I think he is more of a geographical bibliophile.) The poem I’ll discuss of this kind is Strange lands, where he discusses a tourist in Europe. The form of the poem is, it has five stanzas and the stanzas range from three lines to six lines. Its form isn't of a great significance to the poem and I think Billy Collins purposely played it down. Even though as a reader you can clearly tell that Billy Collins is telling the poem in a second person perspective. He focuses on the tourists and depicts contemplative but not to a foreign land to a land he knows of, a land he has travelled to and he wants the reader to travel with him not in his view as he usually does, but in the view of a physical companion. Thus the consistent use of plurality,’ we, others, friends, there we are.’

End of the line, the focal point of this theme has influenced me tremendously as a reader. Billy Collins writes poems about his life, about his contemplations, and for some reason they seem profound. I think through doing so Billy Collins directly relates to a vast number of readers because we all travel with our mind. Is it as profound as Billy Collins puts it? I agree it is just as profound and Billy Collins is the one who puts that profoundness into words when we fail to. I personally think Billy Collins is a great poet for being able to relate to his audience in such a manner.