TED2012
Billy Collins: Everyday moments, caught in time
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Combining dry wit with artistic depth, Billy Collins shares a project in which several of his poems were turned into delightful animated films in a collaboration with Sundance Channel. Five of them are included in this wonderfully entertaining and moving talk -- and don't miss the hilarious final poem!
Billy Collins - Poet
A two-term U.S. Poet Laureate, Billy Collins captures readers with his understated wit, profound insight -- and a sense of being "hospitable." Full bio
A two-term U.S. Poet Laureate, Billy Collins captures readers with his understated wit, profound insight -- and a sense of being "hospitable." Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
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I'm here to give you
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your recommended dietary allowance
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of poetry.
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And the way I'm going to do that
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is present to you
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five animations
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of five of my poems.
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And let me just tell you a little bit of how that came about.
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Because the mixing of those two media
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is a sort of unnatural or unnecessary act.
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But when I was United States Poet Laureate --
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and I love saying that.
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(Laughter)
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It's a great way to start sentences.
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When I was him back then,
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I was approached by J. Walter Thompson, the ad company,
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and they were hired
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sort of by the Sundance Channel.
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And the idea was to have me record some of my poems
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and then they would find animators
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to animate them.
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And I was initially resistant,
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because I always think
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poetry can stand alone by itself.
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Attempts to put my poems to music
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have had disastrous results,
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in all cases.
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And the poem, if it's written with the ear,
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already has been set to its own verbal music
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as it was composed.
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And surely, if you're reading a poem
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that mentions a cow,
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you don't need on the facing page
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a drawing of a cow.
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I mean, let's let the reader do a little work.
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But I relented because it seemed like an interesting possibility,
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and also I'm like a total cartoon junkie
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since childhood.
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I think more influential
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than Emily Dickinson or Coleridge or Wordsworth
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on my imagination
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were Warner Brothers, Merrie Melodies
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and Loony Tunes cartoons.
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Bugs Bunny is my muse.
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And this way poetry could find its way onto television of all places.
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And I'm pretty much all for poetry in public places --
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poetry on buses, poetry on subways,
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on billboards, on cereal boxes.
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When I was Poet Laureate, there I go again --
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I can't help it, it's true --
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(Laughter)
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I created a poetry channel on Delta Airlines
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that lasted for a couple of years.
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So you could tune into poetry as you were flying.
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And my sense is,
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it's a good thing to get poetry off the shelves
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and more into public life.
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Start a meeting with a poem. That would be an idea you might take with you.
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When you get a poem on a billboard or on the radio
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or on a cereal box or whatever,
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it happens to you so suddenly
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that you don't have time
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to deploy your anti-poetry deflector shields
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that were installed in high school.
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So let us start with the first one.
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It's a little poem called "Budapest,"
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and in it I reveal,
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or pretend to reveal,
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the secrets of the creative process.
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(Video) Narration: "Budapest."
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My pen moves along the page
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like the snout of a strange animal
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shaped like a human arm
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and dressed in the sleeve
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of a loose green sweater.
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I watch it sniffing the paper ceaselessly,
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intent as any forager
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that has nothing on its mind
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but the grubs and insects
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that will allow it to live another day.
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It wants only to be here tomorrow,
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dressed perhaps
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in the sleeve of a plaid shirt,
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nose pressed against the page,
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writing a few more dutiful lines
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while I gaze out the window
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and imagine Budapest
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or some other city
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where I have never been.
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BC: So that makes it seem a little easier.
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(Applause)
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Writing is not actually as easy as that for me.
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But I like to pretend that it comes with ease.
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One of my students came up after class, an introductory class,
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and she said, "You know, poetry is harder than writing,"
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which I found both erroneous and profound.
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(Laughter)
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So I like to at least pretend it just flows out.
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A friend of mine has a slogan; he's another poet.
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He says that, "If at first you don't succeed,
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hide all evidence you ever tried."
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(Laughter)
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The next poem is also rather short.
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Poetry just says a few things in different ways.
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And I think you could boil this poem down to saying,
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"Some days you eat the bear, other days the bear eats you."
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And it uses the imagery
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of dollhouse furniture.
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(Video) Narration: "Some Days."
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Some days
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I put the people in their places at the table,
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bend their legs at the knees,
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if they come with that feature,
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and fix them into the tiny wooden chairs.
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All afternoon they face one another,
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the man in the brown suit,
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the woman in the blue dress --
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perfectly motionless, perfectly behaved.
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But other days I am the one
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who is lifted up by the ribs
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then lowered into the dining room of a dollhouse
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to sit with the others at the long table.
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Very funny.
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But how would you like it
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if you never knew from one day to the next
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if you were going to spend it
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striding around like a vivid god,
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your shoulders in the clouds,
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or sitting down there
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amidst the wallpaper
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staring straight ahead
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with your little plastic face?
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(Applause)
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BC: There's a horror movie in there somewhere.
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The next poem is called forgetfulness,
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and it's really just a kind of poetic essay
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on the subject of mental slippage.
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And the poem begins
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with a certain species of forgetfulness
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that someone called
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literary amnesia,
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in other words, forgetting the things that you have read.
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(Video) Narration: "Forgetfulness."
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The name of the author is the first to go,
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followed obediently
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by the title, the plot,
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the heartbreaking conclusion,
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the entire novel,
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which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
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never even heard of.
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It is as if, one by one,
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the memories you used to harbor
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decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain
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to a little fishing village
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where there are no phones.
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Long ago,
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you kissed the names of the nine muses good-bye
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and you watched the quadratic equation
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pack its bag.
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And even now,
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as you memorize the order of the planets,
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something else is slipping away,
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a state flower perhaps,
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the address of an uncle,
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the capital of Paraguay.
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Whatever it is
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you are struggling to remember,
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it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
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not even lurking
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in some obscure corner
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of your spleen.
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It has floated away
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down a dark mythological river
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whose name begins with an L
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as far as you can recall,
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well on your own way to oblivion
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where you will join those
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who have forgotten even how to swim
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and how to ride a bicycle.
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No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
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to look up the date of a famous battle
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in a book on war.
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No wonder the Moon in the window
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seems to have drifted out of a love poem
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that you used to know by heart.
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(Applause)
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BC: The next poem is called "The Country"
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and it's based on,
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when I was in college
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I met a classmate who remains to be a friend of mine.
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He lived, and still does, in rural Vermont.
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I lived in New York City.
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And we would visit each other.
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And when I would go up to the country,
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he would teach me things like deer hunting,
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which meant getting lost with a gun basically --
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(Laughter)
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and trout fishing and stuff like that.
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And then he'd come down to New York City
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and I'd teach him what I knew,
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which was largely smoking and drinking.
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(Laughter)
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And in that way we traded lore with each other.
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The poem that's coming up
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is based on him trying to tell me a little something
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about a domestic point of etiquette
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in country living
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that I had a very hard time, at first, processing.
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It's called "The Country."
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(Video) Narration: "The Country."
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I wondered about you
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when you told me never to leave
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a box of wooden strike-anywhere matches
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just lying around the house,
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because the mice might get into them
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and start a fire.
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But your face was absolutely straight
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when you twisted the lid down
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on the round tin
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where the matches, you said, are always stowed.
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Who could sleep that night?
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Who could whisk away the thought
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of the one unlikely mouse
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padding along a cold water pipe
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behind the floral wallpaper,
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gripping a single wooden match
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between the needles of his teeth?
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Who could not see him rounding a corner,
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the blue tip scratching against rough-hewn beam,
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the sudden flare
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and the creature, for one bright, shining moment,
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suddenly thrust ahead of his time --
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now a fire-starter,
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now a torch-bearer
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in a forgotten ritual,
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little brown druid
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illuminating some ancient night?
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And who could fail to notice,
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lit up in the blazing insulation,
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the tiny looks of wonderment
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on the faces of his fellow mice --
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one-time inhabitants
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of what once was your house in the country?
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(Applause)
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BC: Thank you.
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(Applause)
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Thank you. And the last poem is called "The Dead."
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I wrote this after a friend's funeral,
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but not so much about the friend as something the eulogist kept saying,
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as all eulogists tend to do,
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which is how happy the deceased would be
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to look down and see all of us assembled.
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And that to me was a bad start to the afterlife,
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having to witness your own funeral and feel gratified.
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So the little poem is called "The Dead."
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(Video) Narration: "The Dead."
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The dead are always looking down on us,
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they say.
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While we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,
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they are looking down
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through the glass-bottom boats of heaven
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as they row themselves slowly
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through eternity.
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They watch the tops of our heads
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moving below on Earth.
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And when we lie down
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in a field or on a couch,
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drugged perhaps
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by the hum of a warm afternoon,
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they think we are looking back at them,
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which makes them lift their oars
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and fall silent
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and wait like parents
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for us to close our eyes.
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(Applause)
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BC: I'm not sure if other poems will be animated.
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It took a long time --
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I mean, it's rather uncommon to have this marriage --
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a long time to put those two together.
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But then again, it took us a long time
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to put the wheel and the suitcase together.
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(Laughter)
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I mean, we had the wheel for some time.
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And schlepping is an ancient and honorable art.
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(Laughter)
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I just have time
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to read a more recent poem to you.
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If it has a subject,
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the subject is adolescence.
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And it's addressed to a certain person.
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It's called "To My Favorite 17-Year-Old High School Girl."
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"Do you realize that if you had started building the Parthenon
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on the day you were born,
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you would be all done in only one more year?
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Of course, you couldn't have done that all alone.
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So never mind;
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you're fine just being yourself.
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You're loved for just being you.
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But did you know that at your age
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Judy Garland was pulling down 150,000 dollars a picture,
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Joan of Arc was leading the French army to victory
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and Blaise Pascal had cleaned up his room --
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no wait, I mean he had invented the calculator?
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Of course, there will be time for all that
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later in your life,
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after you come out of your room
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and begin to blossom,
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or at least pick up all your socks.
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For some reason I keep remembering
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that Lady Jane Grey was queen of England
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when she was only 15.
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But then she was beheaded, so never mind her as a role model.
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(Laughter)
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A few centuries later,
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when he was your age,
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Franz Schubert was doing the dishes for his family,
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but that did not keep him
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from composing two symphonies, four operas
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and two complete masses as a youngster.
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(Laughter)
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But of course, that was in Austria
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at the height of Romantic lyricism,
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not here in the suburbs of Cleveland.
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(Laughter)
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Frankly, who cares
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if Annie Oakley was a crack shot at 15
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or if Maria Callas debuted as Tosca at 17?
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We think you're special just being you --
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playing with your food and staring into space.
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(Laughter)
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By the way,
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I lied about Schubert doing the dishes,
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but that doesn't mean he never helped out around the house."
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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Thank you. Thank you.
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(Applause)
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Thanks.
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(Applause)
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Billy Collins - PoetA two-term U.S. Poet Laureate, Billy Collins captures readers with his understated wit, profound insight -- and a sense of being "hospitable."
Why you should listen
Accessibility is not a word often associated with great poetry. Yet Billy Collins has managed to create a legacy from what he calls being poetically “hospitable.” Preferring lyrical simplicity to abstruse intellectualism, Collins combines humility and depth of perception, undercutting light and digestible topics with dark and at times biting humor.
While Collins approaches his work with a healthy sense of self-deprecation, calling his poems “domestic” and “middle class,” John Taylor has said of Collins: “Rarely has anyone written poems that appear so transparent on the surface yet become so ambiguous, thought-provoking, or simply wise once the reader has peered into the depths.”
In 2001 he was named U.S. Poet Laureate, a title he kept until 2003. Collins lives in Somers, New York, and is an English professor at City University of New York, where he has taught for more than 40 years.
Credits for the animations in this talk:
"Budapest," "Forgetfulness" and "Some Days" -- animation by Julian Grey/Head Gear
"The Country" -- animation by Brady Baltezor/Radium
"The Dead" -- animation by Juan Delcan/Spontaneous
Billy Collins | Speaker | TED.com