Minor Poets/Billy Collins/Does this poem work?

[amaril]

This morning I remembered the poem On Turning Ten by Billy Collins, so i found it online ( https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/on-turning-ten/ ) and found the comments kind of divisive.  Here's the poem:    


The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

The version I originally read was in Sailing Alone Around the Room, and that version lacked the last stanza, ending instead with "time to turn the first big number."  I like the Sailing version better because the last stanza on the posted version, while decent-sounding, is an emotional paraphrase with a too-easily deducible meaning: I've realized that my actions have consequences.  The Sailing version, though, ends on a note of uncertainty, which feels more somber/true to the speaker, who hasn't yet made the jump to adulthood.  My preference for the Sailing version is probably due somewhat to bias, as I heard that version first.

Anyways, on PoemHunter someone commented that they disliked the line "all the dark blue speed drained out of it" and I feel the need to defend what is, in my opinion, the best part of the poem.  I think that the adjectives serve three purposes here: they are abstract and emphasize the continuing 'childishness' of the speaker's associations, they are a little bit clumsy (which further contributes to the speaker's childishness), and they are sad words which contribute to the tone of the poem.

That being said, the use of adjectives in this manner is clumsy and inconcise, and I feel like this line would be derided by Poetry Writing 101, if such a book existed.  I think that if you always cut superfluous adjectives/adverbs/etc from your poems, you can lose the 'realness' of your speaker's voice, and that is a big problem with 'textbook' advice: even if a piece of advice is usually correct, there is no 'rule for good writing' that overrides context.  If you always cut the "dark blue"s from your poems, you are writing according to a flow-chart and your poems will lose their capacity for fun and spontaneity.

In a similar vein, one of the commenters on poemhunter felt that Billy Collins was a minor poet without the capacity to produce any singular 'great poems.'  I half-agree with this comment.  In one sense, there is a greatness to simplicity and ease of accessibility.  However, I must also admit that for the most part Collins' poems don't stick out in my memory or change the way I perceive the world in the manner more ideologically complex poems do.  Collins is often 'good' but rarely 'striking.'

What do you think?  Is Collins a good role-model for a poet?  Is he worth studying?  Is On Turning Ten a great poem?

[ellajam]

I can't answer your questions, but I can talk about the poem.

On the whole I like it. There's little I would mess with in the first two strophes, they are stong and novel, for the most part. S3, IMO, could be edited, L1/L2 don't do much for me but I like the rest.

"all the dark blue speed drained out of it":

I love this line, dark blue being drained makes me think of blood while it's still in its veins where it belongs, speed being drained makes me think of losing the joy of the wind blowing in my hair.

Just because an arrangement of words doesn't usually work it doesn't mean it never works. So, if all the poets of the world stopped learning and thinking after Poetry101 that would suck, but it's worthwhile to learn what usually doesn't work so that you look carefully at it when you use it. Each poem is its own and the choices made should work best for that individual poem. In this case I wouldn't cut.

S4 sums up, I think it and S5 could be combined and edited into something better, or maybe S5 could just be cut, as the poet doesn't give a shit what I think I'll stop there.

[Leanne]

I can't tell you what I think about Billy Collins and the reverence he's paid in the USA without resorting to rude words.

[ellajam]

Don't worry, that's just America, seems we think the Kards can change our lives if we emulate them and we voted Trump in. Billy Collins is the least of our problems, but a nice distraction.

[rowens]

Poets don't read poetry in the same way critics who can't write poetry read. But the critics have the numbers, and nowadays the influence. We live in logical times. A critic's time. The critics are more read than the poets. But that's because we're also living in cowardly times. People need somebody else's point of view to back up their own. A poet can do just as well completely missing the point of other people's poetry.

[Achebe]

all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

I thought this was not just the best, but in fact the only good line in the poem.

[amaril]

A good line can be bad in context, and a bad line can be good in context.

IMO: the first four lines of the first stanza are good sensory images. The way physical and mental sicknesses are blurred is relatable, as is the idea that worrying can feel like "coming down with something." The repetition of miscellaneous diseases in lines 5-7 is self-indulgent and accomplishes nothing.

The first sentence of the second stanza is self-aware, in the sense that it is clearly not the voice of a ten-year-old. I prefer this to 'playing the persona straight.' I also think that Collins sacrifices insight for wit here, as these four lines are basically just a shallow mathematical joke. The last four lines of this stanza are better, in the sense that "drink a glass of milk a certain way" is a funny idea that reflects a tendency to follow arbitrary rules. At worst, these last four lines are a caricature of childhood fantasies, but IMO they have enough grounding in image (particularly the milk line) to at least be decent. I don't think that the speaker is trying to convince you that he is actually a ten-year-old.

The third stanza is straight-up good, even if the light imagery verges on cliché. The image of sitting at the window watching light is simple and emotionally sound. It is interesting that light is solemn, and that speed is dark. I like that so many things seem to lean in this stanza: the bicycle on the garage, the speaker against the window, the light against the tree house.

The last two stanzas are ok. I like the "walk through the universe in my sneakers" line, and I like that the speaker continues to give numbers almost superstitious significance. All in all though, this poem doesn't express anything too novel or complex. It is clean but not great. I think that a poem has to risk disclarity in order to be worthwhile, and by that metric this poem is uninteresting. But the 3rd stanza is good enough to make this poem memorable.

3/5

[RiverNotch]

eh now, don't use arbitrary numbering systems to rate a poem! the only reason you actually do that is if you're treating it like a business -- if, to read the poem, your audience has to pay something.

anyway, i think it's quite lovely. i felt something, and when i read this before thjs was posted here i felt something, something fresh and at the same time the memory of something fresh; and it's a concrete feeling stated with some novelty, and stated as if the author actually intended to state it.
that said, it does feel like it's more than the sum of its parts, with the sum of its parts being kinda low. i don't particularly like that line y'all appreciate, in fact i don't appreciate any lines in particular -- but the clarity of the new ending, the novelty of 'disfiguring chickenpox of the soul' and the numerical section, and the bits of childhood i could really relate to (such as walking the universe in one's shoes), they all build up, all leave me with, like i said, a feeling more than the sum of the poem's parts.