Customer Reviews

Picnic, Lightning (Pitt Poetry Series)

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Picnic, Lightning was the first book of Billy Collins' that I read. I bought it because I flipped open the book to "buzzing around the house on espresso" and that Victoria's Secret poem. After I took the book home and read it a few times, I realized how much I liked Collins' poetry for its kindness. There certainly is the kind of poetry which freezes a moment in your life and then breaks it. However, my thirst for poetry requires a lot of variation--I can't always be on some lyric cusp. Picnic, Lightning has enough depth to encourage me and enough lightness to hold my everyday, and a care for words that holds my interest. Plus it's funny. This book holds down a unique place in my life. Perhaps this is no dark tunnel and crashing entry back into the light, but it's Wednesday (again) and I need something between lunch and dinner that makes sense.

I had the privilege of hearing Billy Collins read this summer and it confirmed for me that he is a phenomenal poet with the gift of seeing the ordinary moment as a microcosm of life and the world. And he does it with great humor. If you don't normally read poetry or are looking for an introduction to the best of contemporary poetry, this is the book to read.

This volume of poetry is one of Billy Collins' most enjoyable works. The poems are filled with wit and charm in equal measure. They abound in simple epiphanies about everyday events showing Collins' keen intellect. If someone can bring a simple event like browsing a Victoria's Secret catalogue to life, that someone is definitely special. Read this book and you will be carried away into Collins' world. You wouldn't want to return to the real one after that.

"I like writing about where I am,
where I happen to be sitting,
The humidity or the clouds,
The scene outside the window-
A pink tree in bloom,
A neighbor walking his small, nervous dog."

Billy Collins seems to have moments of brilliance within poems discussing ordinary aspects of everyday living. Is this part of his charm? I think for someone to find beauty in the ordinary, you have to have a vivid imagination and transform the simple into the magnificent.

Collins was reappointed to the post of U.S. Poet Laureate in the summer of 2002. He travels throughout the country for readings, lectures and is well loved by his audiences.

While some reviewers don't feel his poetry has beauty, I think the beauty is when you connect with a specific poem. In this book, I had to read all the way to page 39 before anything really "struck" me as amazing. There is a cute poem about breakfast, a story of fishing and then on page 17 I found: "no matter what the size the aquarium of one's learning, another colored pebble can always be dropped in."

I think what I like is the conversational style. Billy seems to mostly be talking to the reader or explaining a situation that he enjoyed. There is a casual elegance in his poems. He invites you to journey with him through the poems, although at times Collins throws in a highly imaginative sentence or an entire poem that throws you for an intellectual loop. Billy Collins vocabulary is stunning all on its own. The way he blends the words into images and colors is more than impressive.

In "Journal" you can imagine yourself walking in the dark, downstairs in a robe and trying to compose an entry in a journal. Any writer knows, you can hardly go to sleep when thoughts are pouring out of your mind and begging to be dripped through a pen onto a new page.

My favorite poem in this book was: "I Go Back to the House for a Book" because anyone who loves reading can relate to being stranded without a book. Here one part of himself goes back to the house while another part races off into the world. He plays with a similar idea in "The Night House," where his body, heart, mind and soul go to different areas of the house.

"Moon" is rather interesting. Here, Collins speaks of our inner child and how even if we don't have a child, we can care for our inner child. I have to laugh when I read "Paradelle for Susan," because even the poem sounds nervous. Collins repeats most of the lines. Apparently a Paradelle is not that easy to write and it might be a fun challenge to try to write your own poem in this "fixed form."

Reading the poems in "Picnic, Lightning" might make you feel slightly poetic yourself.

Pittsburgh Press has issued special limited edition hardcovers of three of Billy Collins' books: Questions about Angels, The Art of Drowning, and Picnic, Lightning. I'm thinking I need to find an autographed copy of "Questions about Angels." If you are just starting to read poems by Billy Collins, I'd start with "Questions about Angels."

~The Rebecca Review

Billy Collin's latest collection, "Picnic, Lightning" is a smart, funny, moving glimpse into everything from a Victoria's Secret catalog ("Victoria's Secret") to an encyclopedia ("What I Learned Today"), personal relationships ("Paradelle for Susan," which introduced me to a whole new poetic form) to the joy of jazz ("I Chop Parsley...", "Jazz and Nature"). Casual in tone, Collins' poems don't make the reader struggle with poetic diction or unfamiliar vocabulary. Like quiet conversation in a coffee house, they offer a friendly intimacy in their simplicity of subject, and yet challenge the reader with the unexpected leaps Collins makes in his imagery and ideas. "I Chop Parsley..." for example, starts out as a narrative about preparing a meal, becomes a meditation on jazz and a nursery rhyme, and all the while is an examination of how we try to hide our own emotional vulnerability even from ourselves. This poem (one of my favorites in the book) is a wonderful illustration of how willing Collins is to usher his readers into his interior world, observed with a wry self-knowledge and a refreshing gentleness. This is a collection written for readers in the late 20th century who value honesty, humor, razor-sharp observation, and hard-earned wisdom. I couldn't recommend it more highly.

I don't know what else to say about Billy Collins that I haven't said elsewhere. He's a remarkable poet, who does his thing and does it well. Picnic, Lightning is a pretty solid collection of poems, though if you have Collins's selected poems there's no need to pick this one up. Those that weren't included in the selected aren't very good, with the exception of "I Go Back to the House For a Book," which I think is a marvelous poem and should have been included in the selected poems.

Billy Collins fulfills Wordsworth's image of "spots of time" captured and later reflected upon. Though Collins's messages and meanings are subtler than Wordsworth's, Collins connects with feelings and moments common to many of us. His inspiration from daily life, from which he draws Keillor-esque observations, quenched my fears that as a writer, I must draw from exotic experiences uncommon to my readers. A peaceful read at Saturday breakfast.

Several years back, when I read "Paradelle for Susan," in Billy Collins' Picnic, Lightning, I made the acquaintance of the paradelle, a delightfully quirky form that Billy created and passed off as an archaic French form. I am now finishing an anthology of paradelles, with Billy's cooperation, and with the participation of more than fifty contemporary poets from around the United States. I quickly figured out Billy's claim that the poem originated in France 900 years ago was a joke. And that was a major part of its charm for me. I loved the form not only because it was quirky and wild, but also because he'd pulled off such a rascally spoof. I wrote Billy a letter, not thanking him for re-invigorating a form that I knew he'd invented in the first place, but suggesting that we invite lots of poets to try their hand at it and see if we could compile them into an anthology. Billy liked the idea. Other poets--including Dana Gioia, Kim Addonizio, Fred Chappell, Henry Taylor, Sam Gwynn, Gerald Locklin, Wendy Bishop, Kathryn Byer, Allison Joseph, Denise Duhamel, Annie Finch, David Mason, William Greenway, David Hernandez, Colette Inez, Sydney Lea, Susan Ludvigson, Leslie Monsour, Anna Rabinowitz, Greg Williamson, Terry Wolverton, and Chryss Yost--have also liked the form at least well enough to write one for this collection. As Billy explains in the introduction he has written for this anthology, he deliberately set out to write a bad poem when he wrote "Paradelle for Susan." That "badness" is also a part of the poem's charm.

For me, one major strength of Billy's poetry is exactly this blend of mischief and humor, along with generous dollops of intelligence and, on wonderful occasions, genuine tenderness. I recommend his poetry. And I recommend this forthcoming anthology, with a humorous "Brief History of the Paradelle," penned by Billy Collins himself.

All Billy Collins needs is an everyday event and he masterfully creates a beautiful, humorous, inviting scene that anyone would excite anyone. How could you not want to chop parsley while listening to jazz, shovel snow with Buddah, or flip through a Victoria's Secret catalog when he makes it all sound so exotic and wonderful. I am not a huge fan of poetry and I seldom take the time to analyze it deeply, but Collins is the finest and most interesting contemporary poet I know of and would highly recommend his poetry to anyone who likes a good laugh, creative use of language, and something to make them think. This is an excellent collection I am glad was recommended to me and I would certainly urge everyone I know to get at least a taste of Collins.

How does one "review" something like poetry ... the most subjective of all the arts? By giving a subjective opinion, and here is mine: I've been a fan of Collins ever since I read his brilliantly metaphoric poem "Schoolsville." With every publication, I've enjoyed his work more and more. Collins is now my favorite poet, and PICNIC, LIGHNING is my favorite collection of poetry to date. I never tire of reading his rich and clever words. I personally like contemporary "conversational" style poetry, especially when it is infused with startling metaphors, subtle assonance, and rhythmic phrasing, as Collins' work is. I particularly appreciate his many references to writing and words, as in "Marginalia," and his poems that play tricks with time and space, such as "Looking West." But the piece de resistance in this volume is "Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes" ... the title enticing, the words enthralling. I'm so glad I ordered a hardback copy of this book while it was available.