"Try to keep your soul young and quivering right up to old age." – George Sand
In 2008, I’m going to quiver more right here at home.
Oh, my. Talking with the former poet laureate of the United States is a fine (if nerve wracking and completely terrifying and rattling) way to start one’s day. I’ve been suffering from a bad case of esprit d’escalier all day today. “Oh, man, that’s what I should have asked him. Or that’s what I should have said to make him laugh.” As it was, I didn’t have an agenda to interview him or make him laugh or impress him, and so we just were two people having a conversation that was bewildering to both of us.
Billy Collins is not only a fine poet, but a wonderful conversationalist. Funny, charming, with that voice I like so much. I, truthfully, was a blithering idiot during our 35 minute and 24-second call. Not that I’m counting.
“Is your husband trying to show the rest of us husbands up?” he asked when we started talking. “Most of us gave our wives a scented candle or a sweater with a cat on it for Christmas…” “Blather, blather, blurg,” I responded.
I thanked him approximately 413 times in my nervousness. “I’m not sure how my husband talked you into this,” I offered. “Well, I admire him for doing this,” he replied. “Anybody who would go to this much trouble deserves a positive response. I figured he must be in the dog house or he wouldn’t have tried so hard, so I wanted to help him out…,” he laughed.
I tried my best not to seem like a Billy Collins Stalker. I could just imagine him rummaging around on his desk for the “Trace this Call” button. I felt like I was twelve and he was Bobby Sherman. Or I was 18 and he was Ian Anderson. Or I was 48 and he was Billy Collins.
We talked about William Gaddis: “I’ll confess,” he said, “I’ve never been able to finish one of his books. There’s a whole club of us who haven’t read him; we meet every Wednesday.” “Well, they do take some work,” I admitted. “I did my dissertation on The Recognitions.” “I guess you finished it, then,” he said with a laugh.
I told him the particulars of first hearing one of his poems–Litany.
It is still one of my favorite poems by him. I was in Monroe, North Carolina, at the family farm of a friend. There were three of us, three women friends, sitting in the covered open-air living space between two wings of the house late into the night. A storm swirled around us, lightning and aggressive rain, pelting the tin roof above us so furiously that we had to scream to be heard. “I WANT TO READ YOU A POEM,” my friend Gay screamed. “IT’S CALLED LITANY.” And so she screamed the poem at the two of us in her fabulous Southern accent. “YOU ARE THE BREAD AND THE KNIFE,” she started, "THE CRYSTAL GOBLET AND THE WINE."
He liked the story. “It’s a good poem to be screamed in a Southern accent,” he said, laughing. I didn’t mention that Mr Brilliant also made me a bracelet for Christmas that reads, “You are the bread and the knife.”
I introduced him to dorodango. I’m sure he put me on his holiday card list just on the basis of that call. No doubt I’ll get an invitation to his birthday party in March.
As I hung up the phone, I was thrilled. One might even say I was quivering. And yet… is it really the Billy Collinses of the world I should be aquiver over? As much as I kid about adoring Billy Collins and Johnny Depp, I don’t think so.
No, my human survival units aren’t B.C. and J.D. or Robert Duvall or Philip Glass or Laurie Anderson or any of the myriad of people whose work I admire. I don’t see them making me earl grey lavender tea in the morning just like I like it. My friend Lloyd Lewan once talked to me about what he calls “human survival units,” those few people who will drop everything and come to our bedside when we’re dying. Lloyd has met world leaders like Nelson Mandela, “but those aren’t the people who will be with me,” he acknowledged. So it’s nice to meet them, but it’s important to remember our real human survival units. Mine don’t include stars or poet laureates or composers. They include the people around me every day—those are the people who make me quiver, tremble with delight.
I imagine Billy Collins sat down for dinner tonight and recounted an odd conversation he had today with a woman from Asheville who blather blather blurged at him about mud balls and grapefruit spoons. I was the lucky one, though. I sat down for dinner with Mr Brilliant, Emma, and Tess. We talked about learning to ride a scooter and ate pasta with Rao’s marinara sauce and some of that cranberry sauce I love so much. It was delightfully quiver-worthy.
Intentions: Don’t reserve quivering for stars and poets and composers. Look right around you for the people who make you quiver by their everyday encounters with you. Don’t reserve star status for Billy Collins—extend it to your friends, your kids, your partners, your coworkers. Revere them instead. Stop reading People magazine. Adore the people right around you. Extend star status to the people who love you the most–your human survival units.
From the last alphabet challenge: Q is for quiddity
"Try to keep your soul young and quivering right up to old age." – George Sand
