David J Bauman

We’ve been talking about what we don’t like about, or in poetry, and while I’ve been doing lots of great reading on the subject (Here is a little more on Moore’s Dislike), I don’t want to dwell here too long, but instead want to soon move on to what we love about it, what sets us on fire, in that good and passionate way, not in the incendiary painful way.

So just one more night I will stop here and look at the negative, as Billy Collins says, “The Trouble with Poetry.” Now some critics in the last decade have said that Billy himself was part of the trouble, but the more I read him the more I realize there is a lot going on under the surface. Here is a good discussion of that regarding Billy and the Trouble, or troubles with poetry and the writing thereof. And here is a wonderful six minutes or so of Billy being interviewed on NPR about this book and its poems.

In the poem itself Collins seems to say the trouble with poetry is that it inspires the writing of more poetry. Listen to him reading during this live out door performance. To keep  you from being distracted by the background noise, open up the text in a new window by clicking here, so that you can follow along.

*EDIT: Since for some reason embedding is disabled, you’ll have to click on the link below to watch the video. Sorry for the inconvenience.

http://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/xghvc0
Billy Collins – The Trouble With Poetry by poetictouch