Dear Vera,
            I'm afraid I don't agree that it is the poet's task to justify
the ways of the world to Man. using deft imagery. Perhaps all we can hope
for is for a poet to make us look and think in different ways occasionally
and to charm us with words in the interim. Anything else is a bonus
   I think most people are writing about the current tragedy to help
themselves, to try to get a handle on something that beggars belief because
it is so shocking. If any poet thinks he can make 'bearable' the thousands
of personal griefs being experienced now, I would think he/she is totally
arrogant.
             I tend to agree with many of the points made by Billy Collins.
This event is so recent and raw, it should not be regarded as a big Poem
Opportunity.Surely none of us have had time to digest the magnitude of what
has happened yet.I feel I have had enough of towers and candles and eagles,
and none of this symbolism means anything to me in relation to the pain of
loss that thousands are feeling at this moment. I don't think a poet should
be expected to offer comfort where there is little ,if no comfort. What
poets can do sometimes is express human fellowship, to put out a hand and
say that we share an existence which often seems inexplicable and
unbearable, -and because of their skill with words they can express our
humanity better than most people. There is a comfort to be found in
discovering that others know how we feel and have expressed it in a
beautiful or surprising way. However, many poets write with different
intentions, to disturb or unsettle, or whatever, and there is no one
'agenda' for poetry, or any art.
               Kind regards,
                  grasshopper
----- Original Message -----
From: "Vera Rich" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2001 1:25 PM
Subject: Re: Billy Collins and me


> It is surely the task of the poet to find the image that will transmute
the
> 'unbearable' into 'the bearable'. If he/she cannot do that,.. well - let
> him/her go dig ditches. ----- Original Message -----
> From: Bob Cooper <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: 22 September 2001 02:47
> Subject: Billy Collins and me
>
>
> > This article's been drifting round the electrickery of a few people's
> > e-mails, and a couple of other lists, so I thought I'd post it here too.
> >
> > A subject too big for poetry
> >
> > Don't ask the U.S. laureate Billy Collins to write about Tuesday's
> disaster.
> > The terror is overwhelming, he tells SANDRA MARTIN
> >
> > By SANDRA MARTIN
> >
> > Saturday, September 15, 2001
> >
> > Like most people, U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins was following the
sweet
> > banality of routine on Tuesday morning. "I was driving back from taking
> the
> > dog out around the lake we usually walk around," he said in an interview
> > from his home in Westchester County in New York, when he heard on the
> radio
> > that there was a fire in the World Trade Center.
> >
> > "I know people don't smoke any more, but I thought somebody had thrown a
> > match in a wastebasket," he recalled. When he got home, he turned on the
> > television as the second plane was plowing into the south tower, an
image
> > has been crashing into his forehead about every 90 seconds since then.
"I
> > think that it has created a kind of burn on people's retinas," he says.
> >
> > "Will you ever write a poem about what happened on Tuesday?"
> >
> > "No," he says in a response that comes quickly and emphatically.
> >
> > "Why not?"
> >
> > "You can't approach something like this frontally in a poem - at least I
> > can't. It will knock you over. It is like walking into a big wave. You
> will fall on your bathing suit."
> >
> > Isn't it his job to set aside his feelings and write a poem offering us
> > solace, inspiration and wisdom? No, says Collins. "I am a person before
I
> am the poet laureate."
> >
> > Rather than toiling away in an office in the basement of the White House
> > composing birthday poems, his role is to be a literary ambassador,
> > travelling the country and raising consciousness about the value of
> poetry.
> >
> > Still, being poet laureate is an odd position for Collins because he
can't
> > think of any activity that is more private, solitary and deeply
subjective
> > than writing poetry. "Poets, as they become published and go out and
give
> > readings, move out of that condition of solitude into something like a
> > public life, and the position of poet laureate is the most public
extreme
> > that a poet can achieve. In some unfortunate ways, it pulls you out of
the
> > cell of privacy that you tend to write in."
> >
> > The scale of the devastation has reduced the idea of fame to rubble -
for
> > once, the famous are ordinary. That is the way it should be in a tragedy
> of
> > this magnitude, he says.
> >
> > "Maybe some people can say things better or differently than others, but
> > there are no experts here. My reactions are not aesthetic or poetic or
> > professional. They are simply human."
> >
> > Tuesday made Collins realize how very different this tragedy was from
the
> > Oklahoma bombing. "That was one horrible moment," he says. "This seems
to
> be
> > the beginning of many horrible moments, and I think it makes the future
so
> > unsettled and so strange that it is impossible to walk into this ongoing
> > storm of uncertainty and find a position to speak from, let alone to
write
> > something."
> >
> > Poems -- at least good ones -- do not spring forth fully formed on
> command.
> > The creative imagination works away in private, digesting direct and
> > vicarious experience. For Collins, a poem takes place in "an Emily
> Dickinson
> > backyard." It is not a "directly reactive performance to public events,"
> he
> > says, adding that he doesn't "write a poem with a gun to my head" or
rush
> > things into print.
> >
> > Besides, he feels you can't "really get your arms around" something this
> > big, that a poem could get crushed by the sheer weight of the event.
> "There
> > is a tremendous lot of bad poetry that has been written about subjects
> that
> > are too big for the poem," he says. Poetry has always been a vehicle to
> > contain and express grief, but that doesn't mean you need a new poem
every
> > time there is a public or private tragedy. People take solace from
> rereading
> > old and familiar ones.
> >
> > "Poetry is one of the original grief counselling centres," Collins says.
> "It
> > has always been a way of giving form to wailing and to the convulsions
of
> > grief and in that sense, it is always relevant because it gives form to
> > emotions that are flying out of control."
> >
> > Collins has been writing poetry long enough and well enough - he has a
> stack
> > of collections including Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected
> > Poems, which is being published by Random House this autumn - to know
that
> > poetry flourishes in private moments of reflection. Making poetry too
> > specific is the best way to give it a limited shelf life, he says.
> >
> > "There is something basic about any human experience, including this
one,
> > but the specifics of this terror are overwhelming. Poetry always has to
> find
> > the private scope, and the events that are being played out this week
are
> on
> > too cosmic and shocking a scale," he says. "You don't read poetry to
find
> > out about the poet, you read poetry to find out about yourself."
> >
> > Before he retreated to the private spaces that poets inhabit, Collins
> > reminded me that the late American poet Richard Hugo said, "Never write
a
> > poem about anything that ought to have a poem written about it;"
Dickinson
> > said, "Tell the truth but tell it slant;" and W. B. Yeats wrote the
> > definitive comment about poetry on demand in On being asked for a War
> Poem.
> >
> > I think it better that in times like these
> > A poet keep his mouth shut, for in truth
> > We have no gift to set a statesman right;
> > He has had enough of meddling who can please
> > A young girl in the indolence of her youth,
> > Or an old man upon a winter's night.
> >
> > Billy Collins will be appearing at the International Festival of Authors
> in
> > Toronto in October...
> >
> >
> > Any comments?
> >
> > It seems to say things I feel are true for me right now. I haven't yet
the
> > inkling, though it may be the only way I will discover I'm writing about
> it,
> > will be if I am following Emily Dickinson's advice where I "tell the
> truth,
> > but tell it slant."
> >
> > (True art, I guess, needs anger. So will I feel the same when Wild West
> Bush
> > sticks on his sheriff's badge and goes to get the baddie, Dead Or Alive?
I
> > remember the silence and the subsequent guilt I felt when the Gulf War
> > happened, and, before that, the Falklands war.)
> >
> > Bob
> >
> >
> >
> > From: Bob Cooper
> > [log in to unmask]
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
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> >
> >
>