Sonnet
All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now,
and after this one just a dozen
to launch a little ship on love's storm-tossed seas,
then only ten more left like rows of beans.
How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan
and insist the iambic bongos must be played
and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines,
one for every station of the cross.
But hang on here wile we make the turn
into the final six where all will be resolved,
where longing and heartache will find an end,
where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen,
take off those crazy medieval tights,
blow out the lights, and come at last to bed.
Commentary
Billy Collins is easy to love and easier to understand, but for all that, I don’t think he could be classified under “Light Verse”. He almost always manages to get serious without seeming to. But then, the things he takes seriously are often the things which we are conditioned NOT to take seriously, but which we secretly do care about. His realm of expertise is the marginalia (see poem #1130) of the mind - history, literature, pets, food, and how all these get mixed up with our daydreams and memories and form bits of our life. He’s quite like a kindly, dreamy professor going about it, and this blends beautifully with his dry, educated humour (“Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen.”).
I found a book of his poems which keep me awake half the night, but I picked this one over a lot of others because I read it with the delight of recognition
- having given an English exam recently - and the warm, fuzzy, not at all cynical final image of the muse telling her devotee call it a day is, for me, one of Billy Collins’ finest achievements.
— Supriya
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From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
Martin Alexander · 5 April 2003
I love Billy Collins’ poems, but while he may have his wiles, while is spelled with an H!
Martin
Melissa Minjares · 11 April 2003
Thanks so much for sharing this wonderful, quirky poem.
Before you post this permanently on your site you might correct the typo: in line 9 the word is “while” not “wile” (Sailing Alone Around the Room – p146)
“A poet can survive anything but a misprint.” – Oscar Wilde Melissa Minjares
Supriya Nair · 11 April 2003
“while”, then. W-H-I-L-E in all the glory of it’s formerly dropped ‘h’!! Excuse the common cockney…I’m a terrible typist.
Supriya.
Ed Bell · 27 August 2004
I recently had the pleasure of hearing Billy Collins read “Sonnet” on the radio show A Prairie Home Companion. It was my introduction this poetic gem. So much quiet power in fourteen lines. It made me smile with pleasure.
Fred Ubaldo Jr · 15 September 2007
“W-H-I-L-E in all the glory of it’s formerly dropped ‘h’!!
Hate to be a stickler, but the possessive of “it” is spelled without an apostrophe: “its”.
Writing is at the mercy of the largest number of amateurs: the general population.
- Jacques Barzun