Index
10
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2013
What you’ll need:
- quart mason jar ($1.87 from Wal-Mart)
- patterned masking tape ($2.88 each from Wal-Mart)
- decoupage ($4.99 from Wal-Mart)
- paint brush
- scissors
- markers
By Emily Wichmer
MASON JAR VASE
STEP ONE
Tot
a
Cos l
t
:
$9.
74
STEP TWO
FINAL STEP
Wash the mason jar and remove any stickers. Let dry.
Starting at the base, wrap
tape around the jar until it
is completely covered.
STEP THREE
STEP FOUR
Add a ribbon or bow if you’d
like, fill the vase with water,
and
display
your
favorite
flowers.
Use markers to decorate
and embellish the tape.
Cover the jar with an even
coat of decoupage and let
dry.
Next week’s Crafty Dog:
Crayon Ornament
Poems of Billy Collins impress critic
We might be tempted to say
there’s not much to understand
about Billy Collins. Upon a quick
reading, one might call his style
“conversational” or “plain-spoken.” He often writes about places,
people and experiences readers
tend to know. He keeps unfamiliar
words to a minimum. His poems
seem artless, with a lack of recognizable meter or rhyme and arbitrary length of stanzas — perhaps
more accurately called “line clusters.” And for another thing, he’s
actually funny. This isn’t poetry.
This is comfort food.
Au contraire, Billy Collins knows
his poetic tools. What seems so artless to casual readers is that he
doesn’t use these tools to the point
that he is incomprehensible, as
many poets of our time like to do.
What’s so poetic about his
poems? I might point to the line
breaks. He loves to undercut his
own lines, a poetic device called
“bathos.” For example, “The Literary Life” begins, “I woke up
this morning, / as the blues singers like to boast...” The second
line is an ironic addition to the
earnest first line.
Much of his humor comes from
bathos and, on a grander scale, the
way he moves by free association
from one subject to a completely
different one. For example, in “To
My Favorite 17-Year-Old High
School Girl,” the narrator begins
talking to this girl, but then starts
comparing her to significant historical figures as adolescents, but
by the end, we find him admitting,
“By the way, I lied about Schubert
doing the dishes, / but that doesn’t
mean he never helped out around
the house.” These little poems
move quite a bit from A to B.
Collins’ poems are particularly
fun when they mock conventions.
In “Tension,” he uses “suddenly” —
which is a no-no, as the epigraph
before the poem states — again and
again while describing a normal domestic scene. He uses bathos here
too — “ ... suddenly you announced
you were leaving / to pick up a few
things at the market ... ”
“Adage” piles up a number of
clichés while talking of love. And
then there’s “Looking for a Friend
in a Crowd of Arriving Passengers:
A Sonnet,” which mocks the popular
14-line form by repeating “Not John
Whalen” for 13 lines and then —
suddenly — “John Whalen.”
President of Truman State University
A few of President Paino's
favorite songs:
“You and I” by Wilco
“Someday, Someway” by Marshall Crenshaw
“A Hard Rain A-Gonna Fall” by Bob Dylan
“This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” by
Talking Heads
To hear these and more of President Paino's
favorite musical artists and top songs, tune in
today (11/14) from 5 - 6 pm to Ph.D. Playlists!
Right here on campus on KTRM - either listen
live at 88.7 FM or online at
http://tmn.truman.edu/ktrm/.
Undergraduate degree:
B.A. in History & Philosophy from
Evangel University
Graduate Degrees:
J.D. from Indiana University
M.A. in American Studies from
Michigan State University
Ph.D. in American Studies from
Michigan State University
Favorite musical genre:
Rock, Traditional Roots and
Alternative
Favorite song:
“Hurt” by Johnny Cash
of the week
BY MATT SLUDER
“Aimless Love”
by Billy Collins
This is not to say Collins never
is serious. “Horoscopes for the
Dead,” an older poem, uses the
innocuous newspaper horoscope
to highlight a significant other’s absence. The tone changes
drastically from the first poem,
“Reader,” which pokes fun at poetry’s obscurity, to the last, “The
Names.” Collins dedicates this
poem to victims and survivors
of 9/11. The narrator sees the
victims’ last names everywhere
throughout his day, moving
through the alphabet like a morbid “Sesame Street” sketch. To
me, the most chilling line in this
poem is when he recognizes, as
he often does, what’s not there —
“let X stand, if it can, for the ones
unfound.” It is the most poignant
algebraic expression. If you think
Collins is light reading, we must
be talking about different poets.