Picnic,+Lightening

Please write a brief response to the book in which you provide a quote that you consider interesting, puzzling, or provocative, and create a question based on that quote that might provide meaningful discussion. Remember to place the quote in context the way you would in a summer reading journal.

The title of Collins’s book (and its title poem) strikes me as, in many ways, the central metaphor that glues the book together: these two words juxtapose something entirely ordinary, mundane, at times even boring (a “picnic”—which can happen anywhere, anytime) with something entirely extraordinary, flashy, unique (“lightning”—which happens only under certain conditions). What he wants us to experience, I think, is the combination of these two things: to appreciate the extraordinary in the ordinary and the ordinary in the extraordinary. As for the former state, take, for example, what happens in “Picnic, Lightning” when the poet shovels compost—waste—into a heap: such a simple physical act gives the mind free release, a place to wander and, therefore, wonder; and, as such, it produces a moment of deep visual beauty: “Then the soil is full of marvels, / bits of leaf like flakes off a fresco, / red-brown pine needles, a beetle quick / to burrow back under the loam” (25). This “visual” beauty is only beautiful—brought before as a lovely image—because it is lyrically beautiful, because its language mimics what the eye has come to see when the mind feels alive. Its consonance (//soil – full – marvels - leaf – like – flakes – off – fresco//) flecks language off into small grains—not unlike the dirt that the poet attempts to contemplate as small universes in and of themselves. There are puns here that alert us to the liveliness of language, just as the scene he creates is one of life working to protect itself (with the beetle burrowing into the ground for safety): I can’t help hearing “marbles” in “the soil is full of marvels,” as if this is a kind of game that brings the poet back to a childhood of games and imagination; I can’t help noticing that Collins tells us that the beetle is “quick”—a play on the fact that he is both “fast” and “alive.” (“Quick” means “alive,” as in “the quick and the dead.”) It’s crucial to note, too, that this moment of the beetle’s liveliness, his self-preservation, has not only become aligned with art and beauty (a fresco), but it seems possible only because the poet begins the poem by noting how extraordinary things (like lightning) can actually ruin ordinary things (like picnics)—the poem begins with the poet contemplating the freakishness of mortality, how we can be struck down by anything anywhere, as if we are all beetles at the mercy of divine compost shovels. The book is full of poems like this: poems in which engaging deeply in simple things—seeing a bird outside the window, reading the encyclopedia, annotating a book—leads to strange epiphanies, which are all the more beautiful precisely because they are strange. Indeed, as with the lines above from “Picnic, Lightning,” Collins wants us to see how strange the world is, how the extraordinary lies, always, within the ordinary—if only we look hard enough. Picnics would be really boring, he thinks, without the possibility of lightning; yet, by the same token, we’d miss the lightning itself—we’d stay inside, shut out from possibility itself—if we didn’t just go on a simple picnic every now and then. --Aaron Lehman

Picnic, Lightening is a collection of poems that really made me think. I love how Collins wrote about everyday things like the moon, or going fishing. My favorite poem in his book is //Fishing on the Susquehanna in July//. I like this poem because it shows that the littlest thing can make us feel something. When he looks at the painting he is immediately taken away to a place he has never been. He goes into his own world of peace and tranquility. He feels everything that he would feel in this place. He is completely in that moment. I also like how he leaves this place by moving on the the next painting. Its like he realized that he was daydreaming and decided to move on, and come back to the real world. Over all this has been one of my favorite things I have read. --Jack Gilchrist

"Picnic, Lightening" is an extremely thought provoking set of poems. Billy Collins is able to artfully weave in new themes and meanings in every poem, and make even the most ordinary tasks meaningful. The act of shoveling snow is often mundane and disagreeable, but Collins make it meaningful and cleansing. In Collins' poem //Shoveling Snow with Buddha,// Collins writes about shoveling snow with Buddha and how refreshing it is. Billy Collins artfully describes the task and its effect on him; "This is so much better than a sermon in church...This is the true religion, the religion of the snow, and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky," (37) Not only is Billy Collins able to make the task of shoveling snow incredibly meaningful but he also brings up the question and ideas of religion. Buddha is known for his meditation and the quest to end suffering and reach nirvana. As Collins is shoveling snow with Buddha, the act of shoveling snow has transformed into an act of meditation. By shoveling the snow, Collins and Buddha are clearing a path both metaphorically and literally. They are literally clearing a path that can be walked on and used by the community, but they are also metaphorically clearing a path as they are creating a path as they are creating a path for themselves to reach peace and tranquility. They are also creating a path for themselves to use in the sense that they are reaching their own nirvana and learning to appreciate ever aspect of life. Also Billy Collins says that, "This is the true religion, the religion of snow..." thus evoking the idea that the true religion is nature. The natural world represents purity and a truth that many are constantly searching for. Thus Billy Collins makes the point of how nature is the truest and perhaps purest religion as it is open to everyone and everyone is a part of it for their entire lives. In life we are part of nature, but we are also part of nature in death as we are given back to the earth and used as nutrients for plants. Thus by noting nature as the true religion, Collins is noting that the interconnectedness of life is the true religion. Billy Collins also brings up the question of how many tasks, like shoveling snow, do we begrudgingly do everyday that offer us the opportunity to see the purity of nature and reality of how interconnected we all are? And also why do many of us have so much trouble seeing the beauty of these tasks and of the world around us? -Chandler Elliott-Fehle