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Tag Archives: Billy Collins

Post Box Topper, Cooker Hood and A Poem

It was Trevithick Day yesterday and the celebrations went on in Camborne. In the village of Beacon near Camborne, a magnificent postbox topper was seen, celebrating Richard Trevithick, Cornish mechanical engineer and inventor who successfully harnessed high-pressure steam and constructed the world’s first steam locomotive, the “Puffing Devil”

Our cooker hood has been broken for a while and today our eldest daughter came for the day to help replec it. It’s looking very smart and now I have light to cook by!

I have shared poems by Billy Collins before. I love his work, have done since we went to a poetry reading by him last century! This one is for P to mark his birthday.

Today

By Billy Collins

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,

so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw

open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary’s cage,

indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths

and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight

that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight

on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants

from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,

holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,

well, today is just that kind of day.

5 Comments

Posted by mybeautfulthings on April 27, 2025 in Uncategorized

Tags: Billy Collins, Today Billy Collins

Rainbow, Garden and A Poem

21 Mar

A day of sunshine and showers and a rainbow late in the afternoon just as I was feeling a little blue after our daughter had just left. It’s been such a lovely few days. Look carefully and you can just see the reflection of the rainbow. It was brighter in the sky than my camera managed to capture.

Our garden has really come alive over the last few days of sunshine. I love the yellows and whites at this time of year.

World Poetry Day is celebrated on 21 March, and was declared by UNESCO in 1999, “with the aim of supporting linguistic diversity through poetic expression and increasing the opportunity for endangered languages to be heard”.

I wanted to find a poem today to make readers smile and remembered this one by Billy Collins which delighted me many years ago when we went to his poetry reading. On one of our holidays in France we went on an adventure to find the painting in the gallery only to be told it had gone away for cleaning. I was so disappointed. I really wanted to see Goya’s smile and his remarkable hat.

Candle Hat

In most self-portraits it is the face that dominates:
Cezanne is a pair of eyes swimming in brushstrokes,
Van Gogh stares out of a halo of swirling darkness,
Rembrant looks relieved as if he were taking a breather
from painting The Blinding of Sampson.

But in this one Goya stands well back from the mirror
and is seen posed in the clutter of his studio
addressing a canvas tilted back on a tall easel.

He appears to be smiling out at us as if he knew
we would be amused by the extraordinary hat on his head
which is fitted around the brim with candle holders,
a device that allowed him to work into the night.

You can only wonder what it would be like
to be wearing such a chandelier on your head
as if you were a walking into a dining room or concert hall.

But once you see this hat there is no need to read
any biography of Goya or to memorize his dates.

To understand Goya you only have to imagine him
lighting the candles one by one, then placing
the hat on his head, ready for a night of work.

Imagine him surprising his wife with his new invention,
then laughing like a birthday cake when she saw the glow.

Imagine him flickering through the rooms of his house
with all the shadows flying across the walls.

Imagine a lost traveler knocking on his door
one dark night in the hill country of Spain.
“Come in, ” he would say, “I was just painting myself,”
as he stood in the doorway holding up the wand of a brush,
illuminated in the blaze of his famous candle hat.

I just love the whole picture painted by the poet so that it all happens in your mind’s eye and you smile and feel the delight of himself and his wife ‘laughing like a birthday cake.’

6 Comments

Posted by mybeautfulthings on March 21, 2025 in art, Cornwall, environment, Humour, nature, painting, poetry, Postaday2025

Tags: all.poetry.com, Billy Collins, Candle Hat, Goya

Craftivism and A Poem

17 Jun

I missed a crafitivism session last week so have made my piece today. The pieces made are to be presented at the hustings next week to all the candidates standing in our upcoming election to remind them of their obligations to the world.
It’s a green heart with a white daisy and a purple centre and small purple, white and green flashes as on my tattoo which represents the Holloway brooch, reminding all that they should vote!

I’ve spent a happy hour browsing through Being Alive, a fabulous poetry collection and thought you might like this one by Billy Collins. It makes me think of the way exams ask for what the poem means rather than how it makes you feel.

Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
                  
or press an ear against its hive.
                
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
                  
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.
                 
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
                 
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

3 Comments

Posted by mybeautfulthings on June 17, 2024 in community, craft, Postaday 2024, sewing, Uncategorized

Tags: Being Alive, Billy Collins, Suffragette colours

Angels and A Poem

03 Nov

I sold three of my angels even before the exhibition opened so I have spent today making some more. I lost my mojo over the various lockdowns but now I have it back!

Making the angels today put me in mind of a Billy Collins poem, “Questions About Angels,” which I thought might be fun for today.

Questions About Angels

BY BILLY COLLINS

Of all the questions you might want to ask

about angels, the only one you ever hear

is how many can dance on the head of a pin.

No curiosity about how they pass the eternal time

besides circling the Throne chanting in Latin

or delivering a crust of bread to a hermit on earth

or guiding a boy and girl across a rickety wooden bridge.

Do they fly through God’s body and come out singing?

Do they swing like children from the hinges

of the spirit world saying their names backwards and forwards?

Do they sit alone in little gardens changing colors?

What about their sleeping habits, the fabric of their robes,

their diet of unfiltered divine light?

What goes on inside their luminous heads? Is there a wall

these tall presences can look over and see hell?

If an angel fell off a cloud, would he leave a hole

in a river and would the hole float along endlessly

filled with the silent letters of every angelic word?

If an angel delivered the mail, would he arrive

in a blinding rush of wings or would he just assume

the appearance of the regular mailman and

whistle up the driveway reading the postcards?

No, the medieval theologians control the court.

The only question you ever hear is about

the little dance floor on the head of a pin

where halos are meant to converge and drift invisibly.

It is designed to make us think in millions,

billions, to make us run out of numbers and collapse

into infinity, but perhaps the answer is simply one:

one female angel dancing alone in her stocking feet,

a small jazz combo working in the background.

She sways like a branch in the wind, her beautiful

eyes closed, and the tall thin bassist leans over

to glance at his watch because she has been dancing

forever, and now it is very late, even for musicians.

5 Comments

Posted by mybeautfulthings on November 3, 2021 in art, glass, Photography, poetry, Postaday2021, Uncategorized

Tags: Billy Collins, Questions about Angels

The Causeway, Active April and A Poem

01 Apr

I enjoyed this that turned up this morning:

“In readiness for the Easter holidays and an influx of visitors, St Michael’s Mount has implemented radical new social distancing measures.Creating a one way system for those visiting the attraction, the ‘Coming Back Causeway’ has been built to ease congestion, and opens to the public today, Thursday April 1st.
Speaking at the opening ceremony this morning, Marizion parish councillor Mike Mount praised Cormac, saying: “The Coming Back Causeway, which looks almost identical to the original causeway, has been built with such efficiency that hardly anyone saw it happening.” Mr Mount added: “A one-way system on the original causeway was trialed last summer, but was later abandoned after it emerged that visitors could not return from the island.”

Photo by Photojournalist Greg Martin

I like to pass on the Action for Happiness calendar each month. You can find more details here.

A kind friend dropped in some poems for me this afternoon. Here is one of them, by one of my favourite poets, Billy Collins, an American poet we once saw live in South Yorkshire. It is just one sentence and I love it. I hope you do too. Thank you very much, M.

Today

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,

so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw

open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary’s cage,

indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths

and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight

that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight

on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants

from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,

holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,

well, today is just that kind of day.

We threw open the windows this morning while having breakfast and listened to the bird song instead of the radio. Bliss.

5 Comments

Posted by mybeautfulthings on April 1, 2021 in Cornwall, friendship, Photography, poetry, Postaday2021, St Michael's Mount, Uncategorized

Tags: action for happiness, actionforhappiness, Billy Collins, Today Billy Collins

Sunset, Garden Flowers and A Poem

03 Mar

Nearly sunset when I took this photo but then the clouds came in and there was no colour at all but I do like how this one worked.

The wind has beaten down several blooms but that is merely an opportunity to pick them and have them indoors.

We have had Spring-like sunshine and blue skies for four days, though accompanied by cold winds and I was reminded of Billy Collins’ poem, Today. We look forward to the properly warm Spring days with the ‘intermittent warm breezes’ that make us ‘want to throw open all the windows.’ I love the idea of releasing the little inhabitants of the snow domes!

Today

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,

so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw

open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary’s cage,

indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths

and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight

that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight

on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants

from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,

holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,

well, today is just that kind of day.

3 Comments

Posted by mybeautfulthings on March 3, 2020 in Cornwall, garden, nature, Photography, poetry, Postaday2020

Tags: 'Today', Billy Collins

A Poem For You Dear Readers

14 Sep

I couldn’t resist posting this for my readers and friends who are poets and for those of you who love poems as much as I do, even though it isn’t Monday and even though I am taking a break. For Kim and Kari in particular.

Monday – Billy Collins

The birds are in their trees,
the toast is in the toaster,
and the poets are at their windows.

They are at their windows
in every section of the tangerine of earth-
the Chinese poets looking up at the moon,
the American poets gazing out
at the pink and blue ribbons of sunrise.

The clerks are at their desks,
the miners are down in their mines,
and the poets are looking out their windows
maybe with a cigarette, a cup of tea,
and maybe a flannel shirt or bathrobe is involved.

The proofreaders are playing the ping-pong
game of proofreading,
glancing back and forth from page to page,
the chefs are dicing celery and potatoes,
and the poets are at their windows
because it is their job for which
they are paid nothing every Friday afternoon.

Which window it hardly seems to matter
though many have a favorite,
for there is always something to see-
a bird grasping a thin branch,
the headlight of a taxi rounding a corner,
those two boys in wool caps angling across the street.

The fishermen bob in their boats,
the linemen climb their round poles,
the barbers wait by their mirrors and chairs,
and the poets continue to stareat the cracked birdbath or a limb knocked down by the wind.

By now, it should go without saying
that what the oven is to the baker
and the berry-stained blouse to the dry cleaner,
so the window is to the poet.

Just think-
before the invention of the window,
the poets would have had to put on a jacket
and a winter hat to go outside
or remain indoors with only a wall to stare at.

And when I say a wall,
I do not mean a wall with striped wallpaper
and a sketch of a cow in a frame.

I mean a cold wall of fieldstones,
the wall of the medieval sonnet,
the original woman’s heart of stone,
the stone caught in the throat of her poet-lover.

3 Comments

Posted by mybeautfulthings on September 14, 2019 in poetry, Uncategorized

Tags: Billy Collins

Tomato Torte, Billy Collins and Daisies

25 Sep

1 A friend passed me this recipe that she had cut out of the paper, thinking I might like to try it and it is wonderful – it tastes as good as it looks! I’ll post up the recipe soon. It is vegetarian and could be gluten free very easily.

Tomato Torte

2 I first met the poetry of Billy Collins when he did a reading at a poetry event and I just loved what I heard. This poem comes from ‘The Art of Drowning’ and I give you just the first verse. It kind of sums up my philosophy – get the best out of every day – find the beauty that is all around you. Look up the rest of the poem here – it is a delight. The last stanza is especially pleasing.

Days

Each one is a gift, no doubt,
mysteriously placed in your waking hand
or set upon your forehead
moments before you open your eyes.

3 Our wall daisies are an enormous mound of pink and white.