Tuesday, August 3, 2021

Billy Collins - My Hero

 My Hero

Just as the hare is zipping across the finish line,
the tortoise has stopped once again
by the roadside,
this time to stick out his neck
and nibble a bit of sweet grass,
unlike the previous time
when he was distracted
by a bee humming in the heart of a wildflower.

I recently read "Aimless Love" by Billy Collins.  This poem is pretty emblematic of Collins' "deflationary" mode.  There are many poems that are like "I'm in Florida, walking on a beach, doing nothing.  And this is my poem about it."  This poem makes a virtue of the anti-norm.  

It reminds me that there's been a whole series of TV commercials during the Olympics that make a virtue of being a good sport, rather than training hard and winning.

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