Recent Reads

Whale Day and Other Poems by Billy Collins
Read June, 2021

Ordinarily, any new collection of poems by Billy Collins would have appeared earlier on my Must-Have list, rather than almost a year after it was released.  Perhaps, the pandemic got in my way. Perhaps, the shuttering of all bookstores, and me, quarantined at home, took precedence.  Whatever the actual reasons, I was elated to be vaxxed, as well as masked up, and welcomed into Gallery Books in Mendocino, California, in June, 2021. Even more delightful was the experience of walking out again, clutching a  shopping bag of Must-Haves, including Collins’ Whale Day and Other Poems, published during the pandemic.

Billy Collins, our  American Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003, has previously published twelve collections of poetry, all of which I once owned until, they were “accidentally” given away during a mixup, while downsizing and relocating books in our home, but that’s another story, too heartbreaking to tell.  Mr. Collins has been inducted into the American Academy for Arts and Letters, which sounds heady and vaunted, and I am sure that such membership is as special and honorable as it sounds.  Here’s what he means to me:  no matter how mundane, no matter how devastating, no matter how elegant, moments in life can be, Billy Collins has commemorated those events with a poem, writing down his thoughts, so the rest of us can turn to them, when we have sunk or soared during our lives.

I’ve met him twice.

About twenty-five years ago, when I lived in western Washington, I took off with a group of friends and family on the cusp of a  blizzard and drove to Bainbridge Island. Our destination was the high school there, where Billy was  presenting a benefit reading, helping an old friend raise funds for the local library. Even in that echoing, cavernous cave of a setting, Billy created intimacy and camaraderie, for the more than five hundred of us sitting in bleachers or folding chairs, squished together like books on a shelf. Later, I lined up patiently, clutching my book to be signed, as I warily watched  sleet beat against the upper windows of the gym.  I don’t know where Billy went afterwards, but I recall we slipped and slid our way back home for several, harrowing hours.

Years later, in Tucson, Arizona, a far different clime, my husband and I attended the Tucson Book Festival with dear friends who lived there. Imagine the surprise of seeing Billy Collins walking toward us, on the same sidewalk, at the same time, on the same day. My friend said, “Let’s do this. We can’t let this treasure go by.” He led off, “Mr. Collins, do you have a moment?” We wanted to tell him what his work had meant to us, and to our surprise, he was interested in conversation. “Who were we? Where did we live? Did we like poetry?” In short, one of the richest conversations I’ve ever had the privilege to engage in, transpired. We reminded him that we had heard him read on Bainbridge Island, years ago. Like us, he remembered the weather that afternoon.  We talked more about that event and his poetry, as if we were long time friends, and for the two of us who had read all of his works, I like to think that we were.

Get your hands on Whale Days, And Other Poems.  Pour yourself a mug of something warming, or a flute of something celebratory, and spend some time with Billy Collins. Leave his thirteenth collection out on your coffee table or add it to your bedside pile.  Pick it up whenever you feel like you are sinking, or soaring, or for no reason at all, except enjoyment. You won’t regret it.