Poet Billy Collins on shedding New York and finding contentment as a Florida Man
I often write about our state’s inexhaustible tales of “Florida Man” — that guy with a special talent for bad judgment, made worse by alcohol, firearms and a knack for comical misadventure.
But I’m not in the mood for that today. It’s because I found out that the man who is arguably America’s favorite poet has for years now, become a full-fledged Floridian.
I know. I know. Talking about “favorite poets” is a little like recommending the best French restaurant in Pahokee.
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But Billy Collins, a former poet laureate of the United States, is a real gem. He’s a poet whose writing manages to be accessible, poignant and funny at the same time.
I’ve read a few collections of his poems, and saw him read his work and talk years ago at the Palm Beach Poetry Festival. He’s the embodiment of a New Yorker, born and raised in the city and cloaked in its literary life.
He has been recognized as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library, a former New York State Poet and a frequent contributor to the New Yorker magazine. His Wikipedia page still lists him as professor at Stony Brook University’s master of fine arts program on Long Island.
Out of the snow, into the tropics
But when I wasn’t paying attention, Collins cleared out of New York and became a full-time Floridian. And it has shaken me to the core that someone who seemed the antithesis of Florida Man could end up being … well, a Florida man.
How could this be? After all, he’s a poet who wrote a whole poem about shoveling snow with Buddha. What’s a snow poet doing in Florida?
This is so much better than a sermon in church,
I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling.
This is the true religion, the religion of snow,
and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky,
I say, but he is too busy to hear me.
The guy who wrote this is now living in the Orlando suburb of Winter Park, where the frogs bark and the winter temperatures reach the snow-puddling 70s.
“I do a lot of work in the garden but I am not visited by the gods,” Collins told me.
I was speaking to him because next month, at the age of 81, his ninth collection of poems, Musical Tables, will be published. It’s a collection of short poems that have his familiar flair for wordplay.
Here’s one of them, entitled “Carbon Dating”"
He tried it once
as a last resort
but most of the women
were a million years old
(You don’t often get poets who dabble in earth science humor.)
Collins explained about why he’s fascinated with short poems.
“These days whenever I pick up a new book of poems, I flip through the pages looking for the small ones,” he wrote. “Just as I might trust an abstract painter more if I knew he or she could draw a credible chicken, I have faith in poets who can go short.”
And Collins can go short. Here’s one of his new poems, titled “Elegy":
I have turned over
all 52 cards
on the kitchen table.
Still, I think
you must be hiding
somewhere in the deck.
But mostly, I wanted to know from him how he turned up in Florida.
“At some point, I had this gathering feeling that I wanted to live in America,” he said. “And Florida is certainly America.”
New York, he said, had a never-ending list of cultural demands and events to attend.
“You don’t have the cultural obligations here in Florida that we had in New York,” he said. “Certainly, nobody comes to Florida because of the food.”
Finding the non-Florida part of Florida
Central Florida, he said, suits him now. And it’s where his wife grew up, too.
“It’s the non-Florida part of Florida,” Collins said. “And it’s not the New York part of Florida.”
Does he go to Disney World?
He went just once, he said. And when he was there, his wife snapped a photo of him reading the New York Times while sitting on a horse on the carousel.
“We stay away from the theme parks, and I go to Orlando just to go to the airport,” he said.
So what does he like about Florida living? Publix.
“The aisles are so wide, you can drive a Volkswagen down them. It’s nothing like those narrow aisles at Gristedes.”
He said his friends up north ask him how he could be happy in Florida, considering the state’s political bent, which is a stark contrast to where he came from.
“I don’t get up in the morning and think of the governor,” Collins said. “I’m not going to let politics decide where I live.
“I’m in Florida but not of Florida.”
Frank Cerabino is a columnist at the Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at fcerabino@gannett.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Poet Laureate Billy Collins on short poems and being a Florida man
