Writing In The Afterlife Poem by Billy Collins
Writing In The Afterlife
I imagined the atmosphere would be clear,
shot with pristine light,
not this sulphurous haze,
the air ionized as before a thunderstorm.
Many have pictured a river here,
but no one mentioned all the boats,
their benches crowded with naked passengers,
each bent over a writing tablet.
I knew I would not always be a child
with a model train and a model tunnel,
and I knew I would not live forever,
jumping all day through the hoop of myself.
I had heard about the journey to the other side
and the clink of the final coin
in the leather purse of the man holding the oar,
but how could anyone have guessed
that as soon as we arrived
we would be asked to describe this place
and to include as much detail as possible—
not just the water, he insists,
rather the oily, fathomless, rat-happy water,
not simply the shackles, but the rusty,
iron, ankle-shredding shackles—
and that our next assignment would be
to jot down, off the tops of our heads,
our thoughts and feelings about being dead,
not really an assignment,
the man rotating the oar keeps telling us—
think of it more as an exercise, he groans,
think of writing as a process,
a never-ending, infernal process,
and now the boats have become jammed together,
bow against stern, stern locked to bow,
and not a thing is moving, only our diligent pens.
It is another instance of what I call the " Collinsian lie, " his penchant for trying to convince us of something we all know to be untrue. In " The Lanyard, " for example, he tries to sell us the idea that a child who gives his mother a gift thinks nothing of the gift and thinks that the gift will " make them even."
This is an instance of ”the poetry of fancy, " a use of imagination so exaggerated that it comes nowhere near the truth it seeks. It's annoying, and so many mediocre poets do it. The poet who knows what he is about understands that his job ends at death.
We write about human life because it is life that is the mystery to be unraveled. So, then, rather than drawing our attention to the mystery to be probed, Collins draws attention to his errant imagination, which perceives things always obliquely and never straight on.
Many have pictured a river here, but no one mentioned all the boats, their benches crowded with naked passengers, each bent over a writing tablet. very fine poem. tony
Original and arresting thoughts about writing in the afterlife. Like a school lesson, 'asked to describe this place'. The only thing moving is 'our diligent pens'. If you were busy writing like that, the afterlife would not seem so daunting. The best poem about life after death that I have read.
Many have pictured a river here, but no one mentioned all the boats, their benches crowded with naked passengers, each bent over a writing tablet. great imagination. tony
You know it, I know it, I know a brick that knows it. But Collins, for some strange reason, does not know it. For him, it is somehow more aesthetically pleasing to direct the reader to his bizarre imagination than to the truth. He might as well have said to us, " Hey, you know how when you haven't had any water in twenty days you feel just great? " Yeah... okay.
If you consult your own experience in this area of giving your mother a gift, you will readily see how silly and false his idea is. No child that ever lived- EVER! ! ! - has even a single time thought that his gift to his mother was a useless attempt to " make things even" with her for all she has done for him.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
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5/4/2024 6:08:53 PM # 1.0.0.1119
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