Challenge 1:Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins

Long time no see!  India ate me, so now for some catch-up blogging.

So I can safely say that poetry is not a genre I have read much in.  Now, I love poetry, all kinds of it.  Longfellow, Keats, Poe, Frost, you name it, but it's a rare occasion when I sit down with a book of poetry, and you know, read it.  But with Billy Collin's beautiful collection Sailing Alone Around the Room reading it was nothing but a joy.  It contains many of his more famous works including "Marginalia", "The History Teacher" and "Mad Men" with pages upon pages of his other works.

For me, a student of older poets, adoring the ballads and fireside poets, Billy Collins is a bit of an unusual poet.  I'll be frank, I'm not generally a fan of most varieties of un-rhymed poetry (Shakespeare excluded) however with Billy Collin's work I wouldn't dream of it being any other way.  His poems are conversational and thought provoking, and though it doesn't rhyme, his rhythm and diction has express  purpose that carries his words through you.  When I read him I find myself hearing this strong, kind, male voice of a perfect scholar that I just kind of make up.  Many of his poems like "Victoria's Secret" are extremely humorous, and on that subject mirror my thoughts so closely it was a joy to read, while ones like "Marginalia" make me want to cry for a reason I can't quite understand.

Maybe the reading experience would be different for disgruntled lit students who really don't care about the egg salad stains, but for a lover of words and raw exploration of the human condition such as myself it was a glorious read.  Of course there were a few I wasn't so fond of, but they too were a naked and interesting as the rest of his work.  I look forward to reading more Billy Collins in the future, and will likely bring him back out around Christmas to read under the clock in Manitou Springs, or at least that's what I'd like to do.

"Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page

a few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
"Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love."

Total Pages: 172
Number of Flying Platypus Teacups: 9/10