I chose "Another
reason why I don't keep a gun in the house" because it is one of the
greatest poems Billy Collins has wrote. He imagines that the neighbor's dog
is apart of a symphony yet he can't make the dog stop barking.
Another reason why I don't keep a gun in the house
By Billy Collins
The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.
The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,
and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.
When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton
while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.
Analytical Paragraph on “Another Reason Why I Don’t
Keep a Gun in the House”
By Mazin Khoury
In “Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House,” Billy Collins describes how humans are just another species inferior to dogs, as he cannot get the dog to stop barking. He uses sound as a poetic voice causing you to actually hear the barking of the dog. In his poem, Billy Collins draws a scene of him sitting in his house attempting to endure the barking of the neighbors’ dog. He tries everything including closing all the windows and even putting on a Beethoven symphony on full blast. Nothing works, and he continues to hear the dog’s muffled bark. He begins to believe the dog’s barking is a part of the symphony as he explains it in the following lines: “and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,/ his head raised confidently as if Beethoven/ had included a part for barking dog.” He imagines the dog standing, chin up, waiting for the conductor to cue him in. Billy Collins uses personification to give the dog human qualities and show him as stronger or equal to a human because the poet cannot make the dog calm down. Collins creates a vivid scene of the endlessness of this dog while still throwing in comedy and sarcasm.
"The Art of Drowning" is one of my favorite poems because of the way
Billy Collins uses sarcasm to in a sence "make fun" of the saying, Life
Flashed before my eyes.
The Art of Drowning
By Billy Collins
I wonder how it all got started, this business
about seeing your life flash before your eyes
while you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence,
could startle time into such compression, crushing
decades in the vice of your desperate, final seconds.
After falling off a steamship or being swept away
in a rush of floodwaters, wouldn't you hope
for a more leisurely review, an invisible hand
turning the pages of an album of photographs-
you up on a pony or blowing out candles in a conic hat.
How about a short animated film, a slide presentation?
Your life expressed in an essay, or in one model photograph?
Wouldn't any form be better than this sudden flash?
Your whole existence going off in your face
in an eyebrow-singeing explosion of biography-
nothing like the three large volumes you envisioned.
Survivors would have us believe in a brilliance
here, some bolt of truth forking across the water,
an ultimate Light before all the lights go out,
dawning on you with all its megalithic tonnage.
But if something does flash before your eyes
as you go under, it will probably be a fish,
a quick blur of curved silver darting away,
having nothing to do with your life or your death.
The tide will take you, or the lake will accept it all
as you sink toward the weedy disarray of the bottom,
leaving behind what you have already forgotten,
the surface, now overrun with the high travel of clouds.
I chose "Walking across the Atlantic" because I enjoy the way Billy Collins imagines himself literally walking on the Atlantic and he even discusses the fish he sees below.
Walking across the
Atlantic
By Billy Collins
I wait for the holiday crowd to clear the beach
before stepping onto the first wave.
Soon I am walking across the Atlantic
thinking about Spain,
checking for whales, waterspouts.
I feel the water holding up my shifting weight.
Tonight I will sleep on its rocking surface.
But for now I try to imagine what
this must look like to the fish below,
the bottoms of my feet appearing, disappearing.
I
I picked this poem, Flames, because I really enjoy the vivid images and and personification. Billy Collins brings the bear to life as "flames".
Flames
By Billy Collins
Smokey the Bear heads
into the autumn woods
with a red can of gasoline
and a box of wooden matches.
His ranger's hat is cocked
at a disturbing angle.
His brown fur gleams
under the high sun
as his paws, the size
of catcher's mitts,
crackle into the distance.
He is sick of dispensing
warnings to the careless,
the half-wit camper,
the dumbbell hiker.
He is going to show them
how a professional does it.