In Praise of Travel Poet Billy Collins
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 01.24.03 | 11:00 AM ET
We’d like to take a moment to celebrate America’s finest travel poet, Billy Collins. The U.S. Poet Laureate has remarked that he views poetry as a form of travel writing “because it provides not only a change of scenery, but a change of consciousness.” Of course, Collins is talking about travel in the broadest sense: the journey inward, as well as the journey outward. But he does take a keen interest in serious changes of scenery. His latest collection, “Nine Horses,” features “Istanbul,” an evocative poem about his visit to a Turkish bath. It begins:
It was a pleasure to enter by a side street
in the center of the city
a bathhouse said to be 300 years old
old enough to have opened the pores of Florence Nightingale
and soaped the musical head of Franz Liszt.
Another collection, “The Art of Drowning,” includes Consolation, in which Collins attempts to convince himself that he is not disappointed by the cancellation of his trip to Italy. Among his thoughts:
Instead of slouching in a café ignorant of the word for ice,
I will head down to the coffee shop and the waitress
known as Dot.
Collins is featured on aircraft maker Boeing’s Web site.
Related on World Hum:
* Interview with Billy Collins: The Poetry of Travel
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Jim Benning is the editor and co-founder of World Hum.
