Not Your Father's Poetry - Nine Horses, by Billy Collins

If you have the common misconception that poetry is only for eggheads, that it is impossibly complex, and that it has nothing to say to you, have I got the poet for you. Meet Billy Collins, who writes some of the most engaging and accessible poetry being written today.

If you have the common misconception that poetry, if paired with the adjective “accessible”, is inane, sing-song, and shallow, have I got the poet for you. Meet Billy Collins, former U.S. Poet Laureate, Distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College, and winner of dozens of awards and honors for his work. His poetry has been included in the Advanced Placement examinations given to high school students annually, marking it as culturally and academically significant.

The Democracy of Reading

There couldn’t have been a better book to begin my 50 at 50 Project, where I read fifty books recommended to me by fifty different people, than The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. My goals for the 50 at 50 Project are to read books that I wouldn’t have otherwise, and to engage people in a conversation about books that they enjoy, and both of these goals are major themes in TGLAPPPS.

My wife and I met at a book group, which started as a group of people talking almost exclusively about books, and grew to incorporate more social elements, including food and friendship. Reading and talking about challenging books was a great way to get past the small talk and really know how and what people thought. In fact, we got to know each other very deeply, but skipped right past some of the biographical details that often seem essential. One person had been attending the group for over a year before we ever learned that she had a daughter. I remember telling people, after I’d been a part of the group for a couple of years, “I don’t even know for sure how many children John has, but I know what he would say in response to this passage from Nietzsche.”

Aging with Lear

By my best estimate, I’ve read King Lear six or seven times. I read it for the first time in my early twenties, before I married and had children, and my assessment of Lear at that time in my life was that of a young man who hadn’t been forced to look hard at himself and his weaknesses. I didn’t see what Lear and I had in common, though with my latest reading, certain uncomfortable aspects of Lear’s personality resonated in a way that they didn’t twenty-plus years ago.

In my first reading of King Lear, I took Lear’s defense of himself at face value. Lear exclaims in the middle of the play, “I am a man / more sinned against than sinning.” (Act 3, Scene 2, lines 59-60). By this point in the play, Lear’s two older daughters, despite their proclamations of love in the first scene, have shown their teeth, and have driven their father and his handful of followers out into a storm with no shelter. Lear’s famous line from the middle of the storm sounds defensive. He’s willing to admit on some level that he has sinned, but his failings are not as great as the failings of others.

What should I read next?

What book should I read next? Take the one-question survey.

Tolstoy, Beethoven, and Why I Write about What I Read

I think I’ve read Tolstoy's “The Kreutzer Sonata” before, but I have only the vaguest memory of the arc of the story. In fact, I’m about halfway through a second reading, and I’m amazed and ashamed at how little it resonates with me at all. I’ve been at it for a few days, and still haven’t gotten to the part of the story that I would have described a week ago if I’d been called upon to describe the story. A week ago, I would have summarized the story by saying that a married man gets jealous when his wife plays Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata (a piece for violin and piano) with someone else, and that the man’s jealousy is unfounded.

“I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate…” John 14:15-21

The Lectionary text for this past week was from Jesus’ last, long conversation with his disciples, as recorded in John. If you’re reading along in a red-letter version, John nearly runs out of red ink in Chapters 14-17, where we have the longest speech of Jesus recorded in the Gospels.

The emphasis on the Paraclete, translated as Advocate in the New Revised Standard Version that I prefer, brought me back to my confirmation class days. I was raised in the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, but moved to a Baptist church when I married. It’s interesting to me how the two traditions differ in their approach to the Trinity.

In my formative years spent among the Lutherans, we made more of an emphasis on the concept of the Trinity. This is not to say that the Baptists ignore the idea, but the Lutherans felt compelled to articulate the distinctions between the Persons of the Trinity, and identify the work that each of the parts of the Godhead performed or performs.

Tilting at Windmills: My Quixotic Quest

Several years ago, never mind how many, I came across an academic who claimed that Don Quixote was one of the few works that really stood up to multiple readings throughout life. In fact, the scholar claimed that Don Quixote required multiple readings. Specifically, he recommended that everyone read Don Quixote at least three times, once as a young adult, once in middle age, and once in old age.

I’ve thought a lot about this recommendation in the intervening years. In fact, the idea of books that warrant and reward multiple readings has shaped the way I think about literature, and I’ve created my own short list of books that could reward multiple readings every twenty years or so. I’ve identified six works that I found especially meaningful and rewarding when I first read them in my twenties. Those six are the Bible, “Oedipus Rex”, “King Lear”, Don Quixote, Moby Dick, and The Brothers Karamazov. Now, as I approach the end of my forties, I find myself revisiting that list, and rereading works that I read in my twenties. I have a couple of years left in my 40’s, and a couple more works to finish: Don Quixote and The Brothers Karamazov.

So, for the next several weeks, I’ll be spending time with Don Quixote, as part of my Quixotic quest to revisit some rewarding literature, and to live like literature can have an impact on one’s life.