Collins Address
Commencement Address
May 19, 2008
by Billy Collins
President Celeste, Distinguished Faculty, Staff, Parents, Relatives, Friends and, most importantly, the 2008 graduating class of Colorado College.
I am going to speak for 13 minutes. I think you deserve to know that this will be a finite experience. It is well-known in the world of public speaking that there is no pleasure you can give an audience that compares to the pleasure they get when it is over, so you can look forward to experiencing that pleasure 13 minutes from now. All the pre-law students just looked at their watches.
This is not the first commencement address I have ever given. But the task of dispensing advice to a group of young strangers, and, worse, the job of reassuring them about the future does not get any easier with time or practice. Current events are no help, as usual, when it comes to dispensing optimism. The commencement address is also an open invitation to pretend to know more than you do, specifically how in the world you got to the point in life where you were seriously considered as a commencement speaker. Ask any high school or college classmate of mine and they will tell you that I would be a serious contender for the Most Unlikely Ever to Be Invited To Give A Commence Address Prize. Then there is global warming - it should be called "global roasting," "warming" is too comforting - and the economy and the war. China, Zimbabwe. The Gaza Strip. Is there anyone who knows more about these issues than I? As you can see, I'm the one who wasn't even smart enough to wear sunglasses this morning.
To give such an address is also to walk through a mine field of clichés. Most of which I don't believe anyway. I am not, for example, a big fan of working hard to achieve something. I prefer the attitude of Max Beerbohm who said that "the ant sets an example for us all, but it is not a good one." He must also be credited with pointing out that the hardest thing about being a poet was figuring out what to do with the other 23 ½ hours of the day. And even if I did work hard at something, maybe writing 50 drafts of a poem, I would never admit it. Another motto I hold dear is "If at first you don't succeed, hide all evidence that you ever tried."
One consolation every commencement speaker can rely on is the universal truth that no one ever remembers their commencement address. It's like choosing the music for your wedding. You are much too excited to hear a note of it. I frankly have no recollection of who my college commencement speaker was, yet I seem to have muddled through life ok without the benefit of his - or her - timely advice.
One reason such addresses are quickly forgotten is that the focus of them tends to be The Future. You have gone to college and managed to graduate. That's all well and good, the speaker will tell you, but now you must face…. the Future. You should imagine some scary organ music in the background every time I say the word. Such speakers want to give you the impression that you are teetering on the brink of a dizzying cliff, at night, in the rain. That dark area below you into which you are about the plummet is… the Future.. Of course, many elect to simply avoiding the Future by going to graduate school, but let me assure all of you that the Future will never arrive and that no one has ever experienced it. Remember when you were in high school, college was the future. Well, now college is the past. What happened? It's a mystery. Even with a Time Machine, the future you may visit immediately becomes your new Present. You know, I just remember something my commencement speaker said. He (or she) said that the past was behind us and the future lay ahead--something I had already picked up in a history class.
So much attention to time, very odd, especially for people freshly graduated from college who justifiably feel they have all the time in the world. Maybe today we should take another look at the subject. From my experience, there are two basic ways to regard time, or anything else: The Pragmatic and the Poetic.
The Pragmatic tend to think of the past as a body of tradition to be preserved and/or a reservoir of errors and miscalculations that we can learn from and apply to the Future. For the Poetic, the past is simply a source of nostalgia and regret. Susan Sontag, a confirmed subscriber to the Poetic view, once wrote: "Just wait until now becomes then and you will see how happy we were."
As for the Future, the Pragmatist thinks of it not only as an opportunity to avoid repeating the blunders of the past, but also a door that opens onto opportunities for growth and improvement.. Robert Lewis Stevenson, representing the Pessimistic view once said concerning the Future that "everybody sooner or later will sit down to a banquet of consequences," to which I can only add "Pass the butter." The Poetic hold a simpler view; for them, the Future is simply Death. And that is why the consuming subject of literature is Death. Or should we say misery leading to Death? Many of you know this intimately. If you majored in English here at Colorado College, you actually majored in Death. Take any anthology of literature and remove all the poems, stories, and plays that address the subject of human mortality and what remains will add up to little more than a pamphlet, a brief brochure of literature.
And that leaves the Present, that elusive moment where everything takes place but is moving too fast to actually apprehend. I am amused by Philip Lopate's feeling that the Present is vastly overrated and actually irritating because it keeps interfering with two of his favorite anxieties: lamenting over the past and worrying about the future. It's takes a certain temerity to actually disparage the Present. It is too fleeting even to contemplate.. We can assess the present only after it has passed. Or so we may think.
There is one way to access the present, and poetry never tires of pointing this out. You do so by slowing down. Poetry on the page even helps you to do this by forcing you to decelerate as you are reading it. You simply cannot read a stanzas with line-breaks at the same clip that you read the sports section of The Denver Post. To even approach the present, it is necessary to stop what you are doing whether it's filling out a form or going grocery shopping - chores you decided to do in the past for the sake of the future. Such activities ask only that you go through the motions.
Here is an analogy which admittedly may strike you as a little crackpot. Matter is composed of atoms and subatomic particles. Through the use of a particle accelerator it is possible to make these tiny bits collide which releases energy. Time, on the other hand, is composed of moments. And by arresting one of those moments, by concentrating fully on it, by smashing it under the intensity of your gaze. an energy will be released. Instead of warning you not to try this at home; I am encouraging you to try it at home and anywhere else you can.
Before I return to that essential point about your involvement in the present moment, let me share with you my Top Ten thoughts on the subject of Time:
10)
Time
is
not
money.
Time
is
time.
9)
Time
is
more
valuable
that
money.
8)
Magazines
largely
devoted
to
reporting
the
weight
gains
and
losses
of
celebrities
are
a
waste
of
time.
7)
St
Augustine
said
that
he
understood
the
concept
of
Time
perfectly
until
he
started
thinking
about
it.
6)
In
the
past
time
was
measured
not
in
months
and
hours,
but
in
birdsong,
the
brightness
moonlight,
and
the
migration
patterns
of
animals.
5)
In
the
words
of
James
Brown:
"Money
won't
change
you,
but
Time
will
take
you
out.
4)
When
your
time
is
over,
you
will
be
remembered
for
what
you
did,
not
for
what
you
never
got
around
to
doing.
No
eulogist
at
your
funeral
will
say
"Too
bad
she
never
signed
up
for
that
yoga
class."
Or
"A
pity
he
never
followed
up
on
those
Italian
lessons."
So
don't
waste
even
more
time
worrying
about
the
things
on
your
"To
Do"
list.
3)
When
your
time
is
done,
you
will
not
be
remembered
for
what
clothes
you
wore
or
what
kind
of
car
you
drove.
F.
Scott
Fitzgerald
wrote
a
letter
to
his
daughter
as
she
was
beginning
college.
The
letter
is
full
of
fatherly
advice
about
such
things
as
the
importance
of
studying
and
the
dangers
of
boys.
Finally,
at
the
end
of
the
letter
he
adds
"Don't
spend
a
lot
of
time
on
your
hair."
2)
There
really
is
no
time
like
the
present.
But
there
is
no
time
like
the
past
or
the
future
either,
so
what
are
you
going
to
do?
1)
The
most
striking
definition
of
Time
that
I
know
comes
from
Martin
Amis
who
called
time
"that
mysterious,
inexorable
force
that
eventually
will
make
everyone
look
and
feel
like
hell."
To return to our theme, it must be said that Time with a capital T which ensures our Mortality with a capital M is the consuming subject of Poetry, whose most repeated theme is the theme of carpe diem. As you know, college graduates,carpe diem does not mean the fish of the day. Carpe diem poetry urges us to seize our days, to carpe our diems simply because we do not have an unlimited supply of diems given to us. The echoing song of carpe diem is meant as a check, a corrective to the presumptuousness of walking on this earth taking life for granted.
Sometimes we need an event to shock us into the present, an event so disruptive that it does not allow us to continue wallowing in the past or putting off things until an indefinite manana. Manana by the way does not mean "tomorrow": it means "not today."
In the wake of the terrorist arracks on September 11th, many people, especially in New York City, spoke of how the event prompted them to make adjustments in their personal lives, to speed things up. An engaged couple who had planned to marry the following year decided to get married the following week. Plans that had been put off jumped to the tops of people's lists. Without knowing it, people were simply following the advice that poetry has been delivering since the Roman poet Horace wrote the words carpe diem quam minimum credula postero - seize the day and trust little in the future - in the first century before Christ. Some of us require a catastrophic experience to remind us that we are indeed alive. Some need major surgery to realize that life is precious. Some have to go through a windshield to see that today is all we are given.. Others know this from their reading of poetry-a somewhat less traumatic experience.
And the corollary to carpe diem - a vein that runs deeply through the rock of poetry - is gratitude, gratitude for simply being alive, for having a day to seize. The taking of breath, the beating of the heart. Gratitude for the natural world around us - the massing clouds, the white ibis by the shore. In Barcelona a poetry competition is held every year. There are three prizes:. The third prize is a rose made of silver, the second prize is a golden rose, and the first prize: a rose. A real rose. The flower itself. Think of that the next time the term "priorities" comes up.
Let me end with the wish that many moments lie ahead of you, that you don't squander your time by looking through rose-colored glasses into the past or trying to look into the Future through a blindfold, or reading those aforementioned glossy magazines.
You must have known when you invited a poet to speak to you, you would not get out of here without a poem, one for today on the subject of filial gratitude because a good place to start expressing your gratefulness is with your parents who brought you into being and made it possible for you to enjoy the happy milestone that we are here to celebrate today:
The Lanyard
The
other
day
as
I
was
ricocheting
slowly
off
the
pale
blue
walls
of
this
room,
bouncing
from
typewriter
to
piano,
from
bookshelf
to
an
envelope
lying
on
the
floor,
I
found
myself
in
the
L
section
of
the
dictionary
where
my
eyes
fell
upon
the
word
lanyard.
No
cookie
nibbled
by
a
French
novelist
could
send
one
more
suddenly
into
the
past--
a
past
where
I
sat
at
a
workbench
at
a
camp
by
a
deep
Adirondack
lake
learning
how
to
braid
thin
plastic
strips
into
a
lanyard,
a
gift
for
my
mother
.
I
had
never
seen
anyone
use
a
lanyard
or
wear
one,
if
that's
what
you
did
with
them,
but
that
did
not
keep
me
from
crossing
strand
over
strand
again
and
again
until
I
had
made
a
boxy
red
and
white
lanyard
for
my
mother.
She
gave
me
life
and
milk
from
her
breasts,
and
I
gave
her
a
lanyard.
She
nursed
me
in
many
a
sick
room,
lifted
teaspoons
of
medicine
to
my
lips,
set
cold
face-cloths
on
my
forehead,
and
then
led
me
out
into
the
airy
light
and
taught
me
to
walk
and
swim,
and
I,
in
turn,
presented
her
with
a
lanyard.
Here
are
thousands
of
meals,
she
said,
and
here
is
clothing
and
a
good
education.
And
here
is
your
lanyard,
I
replied,
which
I
made
with
a
little
help
from
a
counselor.
Here
is
a
breathing
body
and
a
beating
heart,
strong
legs,
bones
and
teeth,
and
two
clear
eyes
to
read
the
world,
she
whispered,
and
here,
I
said,
is
the
lanyard
I
made
at
camp.
And
here,
I
wish
to
say
to
her
now,
is
a
smaller
gift
-
not
the
archaic
truth
that
you
can
never
repay
your
mother,
but
the
rueful
admission
that
when
she
took
the
two-tone
lanyard
from
my
hands,
I
was
as
sure
as
a
boy
could
be
that
this
useless,
worthless
thing
I
wove
out
of
boredom
would
be
enough
to
make
us
even.
One final wish: Salvador Dali once said that "Every morning when I waken, I experience a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dali." May you graduates waken every morning to experience the supreme pleasure of being yourselves.