DEATH IS UNESCAPABLE

The Wires of the Night explains mental, inner thoughts into understandable images but with beauty rather than wit. Kept up through the night by the loss of an unnamed man, Collins pictures his death first as a body, then as a house with “an entrance and an exit/ doors and stairs,” then as a “white shirt and baggy trousers,” then as a book, a car, a house again, a lover and a bed. The transformation of concrete images through the poem reflects the emotional change of grieving and leads to the inspiring, if somewhat straightforward final lines:

and then [his death] was 'the light of day and the next day and all the days to follow, it moved into the future like the sharp tip of a pen moving across an empty page.’ 

I have been thinking about the poem by Billy Collins. In the tangle of ever-changing imagery, I think he captures the repetition essential in the process of grief and that death is inevitable. Or perhaps it shows that once you think you have a handle on what loss means, it means more, and takes another shape. And then at the end... after a long hard night wrestling with death, the narrator awakens to the fact that this loss will go with him into the future. 

Then, I started to notice a unique imaginative twist to many of the poems and even an occasional tendency towards death in "Purity." Billy Collins seems to see himself in an animated world where the laws of life and death don't always apply. While "Purity" is rather comical and shows a tongue-in-cheek attitude to the freedom he might be experiencing in his writing, "The Wires of the Night" is a solemn animation of death. While the skeleton in "Purity" is free, "Death" soaks itself into the poets mind and seems to present an instability and then a calm release from thought. 
 
Billy Collins was asked 'What are the recurring themes in your poems? This is what he said..

' I mean, the theme of poetry is death. The theme of literature is essentially misery leading to death. They asked Freud, “What is the aim of life?” Death is what he says. So that’s the subject of poetry. Mortality is the overarching subject of poetry. I mean some would say love is the subject of poetry, but it’s usually love in the context of death. Like the great poem by Andrew Marvell to his coy mistress, and the reason they should make love is because they’re not going to live forever. And the oldest theme in poetry is “carpe diem”. It’s seize the day. And the reason you want to “carpe” your “diems” is that you don’t have that many “diems” given to you! So this urgency that floods into your life when you see it through this lens of death . . . I mean, that seems to be the basic theme of poetry. And my poetry is no different.'

In the poem, The Art of Drowning, by Billy Collins, death is the theme. The poet explores the idea of life passing before one's eyes. That is not just what happens when one drowns but any tragic situation where death is possible. 
Drowning is when a person sinks below the surface of a body of water never to return. In this poem, it is a natural body of water, not a swimming pool or bathtub. The poem uses nature to convey the art. It speaks of the tide, the lake, the ship, the weedy bottom and the surface.

He mentions the ways that drownings occur: a flood zone, a cliff above the water, falling from a ship, the tide sweeping its victim away or the lake where one played games. The images are realistic and easy to picture in one's mind. The looseness of the writing makes it enjoyable to read. It appears to have no rhyme or rhythm just good  flow.
For those who believe in eternity, that is exactly how it is. Death continues where life ended. Regrets do not exist. The art of drowning looks ahead to eternity. It has nothing to fear. Survivors often speak of a brilliant light and a second chance at life awaits them.
Oftentimes, death is fearful and that is why life passes before one's eyes. This idea of death comes when one is spiritually ready to face their Creator. Without faith, fear reigns.

By Wizilya Lembeli