Picnic, Lightning

By Billy Collins

Winner of the 1999 Paterson Poetry Prize

Over the past decade, Billy Collins has emerged as the most beloved American poet since Robert Frost, garnering critical acclaim and broad popular appeal. Annie Proulx admits, "I have never before felt possessive about a poet, but I am fiercely glad that Billy Collins is ours." John Updike proclaims his poems "consistently startling, more serious than they seem, they describe all the worlds that are and were and some others besides."

This special, limited edition celebrates Billy Collins's years as U.S. Poet Laureate. Picnic, Lightning—one of the books that helped establish and secure his reputation and popularity during the 1990s—combines humor and seriousness, wit and sublimity. His poems touch on a wide range of subjects, from jazz to death, from weather to sex, but share common ground where the mind and heart can meet. Whether reading him for the first time or the fiftieth, this collector's edition is a must-have for anyone interested in the poet the New York Times calls simply "the real thing."

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Release date: Jan 15, 1998
• ISBN: 9780822991052

Billy Collins

Billy Collins is the author of twelve poetry collections, including Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes, Whale Day, and Horoscopes for the Dead. He has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. A professor of English at Lehman College, he was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States for 2001 to 2003, and Poet Laureate of New York State from 2004 to 2006. In 2016 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives with his wife in Westchester County, NY.

Book preview

A Portrait of the Reader with a Bowl of Cereal

"A poet…never speaks directly,

as to someone at the breakfast table."

—Yeats

Every morning I sit across from you

at the same small table,

the sun all over the breakfast things—

curve of a blue-and-white pitcher,

a dish of berries—

me in a sweatshirt or robe,

you invisible.

Most days, we are suspended

over a deep pool of silence.

I stare straight through you

or look out the window at the garden,

the powerful sky,

a cloud passing behind a tree.

There is no need to pass the toast,

the pot of jam,

or pour you a cup of tea,

and I can hide behind the paper,

rotate in its drum of calamitous news.

But some days I may notice

a little door swinging open

in the morning air,

and maybe the tea leaves

of some dream will be stuck

to the china slope of the hour—

then I will lean forward,

elbows on the table,

with something to tell you,

and you will look up, as always,

your spoon dripping milk, ready to listen.

I

Fishing on the Susquehanna in July

I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna

or on any river for that matter

to be perfectly honest.

Not in July or any month

have I had the pleasure—if it is a pleasure—

of fishing on the Susquehanna.

I am more likely to be found

in a quiet room like this one—

a painting of a woman on the wall,

a bowl of tangerines on the table—

trying to manufacture the sensation

of fishing on the Susquehanna.

There is little doubt

that others have been fishing

on the Susquehanna,

rowing upstream in a wooden boat,

sliding the oars under the water

then raising them to drip in the light.

But the nearest I have ever come to

fishing on the Susquehanna

was one afternoon in a museum in Philadelphia

when I balanced a little egg of time

in front of a painting

in which that river curled around a bend

under a blue cloud-ruffled sky,

dense trees along the banks,

and a fellow with a red bandanna

sitting in a small, green

flat-bottom boat

holding the thin whip of a pole.

That is something I am unlikely

ever to do, I remember

saying to myself and the person next to me.

Then I blinked and moved on

to other American scenes

of haystacks, water whitening over rocks,

even one of a brown hare

who seemed so wired with alertness

I imagined him springing right out of the frame.

To a Stranger Born in Some Distant Country Hundreds of Years from Now

I write poems for a stranger who will be born in some distant country hundreds of years from now.

Mary Oliver

Nobody here likes a wet dog.

No one wants anything to do with a dog

that is wet from being out in the rain

or retrieving a stick from a lake.

Look how she wanders around the crowded pub tonight

going from one person to another

hoping for a pat on the head, a rub behind the ears,

something that could be given with one hand

without even wrinkling the conversation.

But everyone pushes her away,

some with a knee, others with the sole of a boot.

Even the children, who don't realize she is wet

until they go to pet her,

push her away

then wipe their hands on their clothes.

And whenever she heads toward me,

I show her my palm, and she turns aside.

O stranger of the future!

O inconceivable being!

whatever the shape of your house,

however you scoot from place to

Reviews for Picnic, Lightning

[foggidawn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I find poetry contagious,like a yawn. Too much of itand my thoughts break apartinto line and stanza,metaphor dribbling out,sticky sweet.Old envelopes and backs of shopping listsblank canvases for scrawled verseuntil I find myself in the canned soup aislemusing on a thought inspired by April rainand too much Billy Collinsin one evening.Trying to describe his work, I graspat elegant turns of phrase, likeinspired accessibility ormundane transcendence.I'll have to read some more of this, I think.But not, perhaps, right away.

[mcschlosser · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love Billy Collins and Picnic, Lightening does not disappoint. His poetry always leaves me feeling like I've been visiting with my grandfather. My favorite from this collection is - This Much I Do Remember. It put me in mind of Monet racing against the sun to capture a single, simple moment in time, a moment seemingly unimportant, yet forever fixed in your minds eye or, in Monet's case, an the canvas.

[realbigcat · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Picnic, Lighting by Billy Collins is a wonderful book of poetry. Collins writes from the heart in a beautiful way about the things we see and do everyday but don't know how to put into words. He does that for us. You don't need a PHD to interpret his work. It's easy to read but short and I was finished reading it way to soon.

[rmariem_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Reasons other people might love this book:1. Easy to recommend, especially to people who don’t read a lot of poetry. I plan on giving my copy to my mom. It’s easy to read, easy to follow, and easy to put down at night. No emotional bombs and no c-words (I’m looking at you, Carolyn Forche.)2. Billy Collins writes the most thematically vanilla poetry imaginable, which is a huge part of his appeal: “Oh, this is a poem about eating breakfast? I eat breakfast! This is so great.”3. He’s a really good writer, and some of these poems are really good.& Reasons I didn’t love this book:1. Reasons #1 & 2 from above. I’m not one of those people with a snooty aversion to popular poets, but BC just takes accessibility and niceness to a level I find really boring. I read these poems in the middle of the night, at the point where my brain was already half asleep and I wasn’t committing myself 100% to anything but breathing, and this book felt right at my level. That says something, I think…2. The format is really sucky. For too many of the poems, a page break comes at a point where the last line on one page feels like a good conclusion, then you turn the page and surprise! There’s another 3 stanzas to go. Distracting, and doesn’t do much for the integrity of the poems.3. There are some really good poems in this book, MAYBE one or two great ones… but the good stuff to filler ratio seems skewed to the negative. Much of this impression comes down to personal preference, but so it goes.

[whitewavedarling · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

While many of these poems are worth reading, others feel more like the author thinking "what if" and writing a poem based on that supposition alone--this wouldn't be a problem, except in that sometimes that "what if I wrote a poem about..." thought is the most interesting (or only interesting) part of the poem. I've read Collins' work before, and really enjoyed it, but these just didn't live up to the other works I'd read from Collins. In general, they were often forgettable, and none were poems that I'd be driven to reread or bring into a classroom, which I've done with some of his other work. I'd recommend this book to fans of Collins, but if you're someone looking for a new poet to explore, I'd go with one of his earlier collections instead. These were rather simple for my taste, with too much allusion as the backbone of poems, and not enough language or thought-play.

[omame_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

this is the first time i've read billy collins and i found myself totally charmed by him. he is funny, thoughtful, sad, insightful, smooth all at the same time. the imagery is spot on, almost always. especially liked the poem "marginalia."