Darn, now I can't mock...

Well, Pensacola finally wised up and set an episode in San Diego, so I can't laugh at them for pretending that deserts and canyons constitute the geography of, say, Nebraska, or any other place they try to pretend they're in. It took a lot of the fun out of it, actually. ;)

"And many Noahs too / bearded and fiercely browed, vigilant at every prow."

{Word of warning: This is seriously, unashamedly fangirlish. I mean really. I'm scaring myself a bit here.}

Perhaps this is a sad admission to make as an English major, but to be honest, I've run into realtively few works that really make me sit up and take notice. (I'm thinking here of LMB in general, Connie Willis' Passage, George R. R. Martin, etc.) Now, I had read a few things by Billy Collins (US Poet Laureate 2001-2003), but I hadn't taken a lot of notice of him until this week, when I checked out Nine Horses, which is his most recent collection of poems.

Well.

It usually takes me several days to make it through a book of poetry, but I read this one almost straight through yesterday. I often found myself having to stop for a bit to remember to breathe and get my heart rate down to a decent level. Each poem was better than the last. This man has captured some things that I've spent the last four years and hundreds of pages trying to get right, and usually in a two pages or less. Almost all of the poems are breathtaking in some way--some drift along quietly only to stand up and thwap you in the gut at the end; others have to be taken as a whole, maybe read two or three times, before the scope becomes clear.

This one, for example, is one of the ones that pull you up short at the end. ( Ave Atque Vale )

And this one is one that creeps up on you throughout each line, until you wonder why you never saw that before. (Or, if you're like me, why you couldn't string these words together when you were trying to write about this!) ( Velocity )

This one, as well, is what I mean about slowly building up until it's ingrained itself into your psyche: On Turning Ten.

I think part of the reason I instantly fell in love with everything in this volume is the musicality of the lines and stanzas. Not that any of them could necessarily be turned into songs, but these are poems that command you to read them out loud, or at least under your breath, instead of silently in your head. Like this one, which I read to the cat because I couldn't contain myself: ( Lying in a Bed in the Dark, I Silently Address the Birds of Arizona )

Now, lest anyone think this guy is the most depressing writer on Earth, he's actually known for his comedic poems. Like this one about Smokey the Bear, called "Flames". Or "Nostalgia", which made me cackle, and then suddenly stop and catch my breath at the end.

All right, I'm done with the fangirling for now. But check this guy out. There are several poems from his earlier volumes online here, and probably more if you Google the guy or read the excerpts at Amazon.