The Constitution and Billy Collins

 

Billy Collins was Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001-2003. Like many a Poet Laureate, he spent a good deal of his life trying to teach people to appreciate the medium. But a good deal of the time, he found it frustrating... especially in his role as a college English professor. Very often, people want to know the one, exact, unequivocal meaning of a poem.... when even the Poet Laureate is only dimly aware of the many potential interpretations that his own good work may hold. He experienced many instances of this frustration, and so he responded as good poets often do -- he wrote a poem about it.

And it is one in which I find resonance with my own profession. Very often, people in churches want to know the one, exact, unequivocal meaning of a passage in the Bible. But the Bible consists mostly of a sort of poetry.  Few of its passages have any single, absolute meaning.  So years ago I wrote a “musing” in which I replaced the word “poetry” with “the Bible” in Billy Collins’ poem about the subject – see the results below.

My best friend, Bruce Urbschat, recently suggested that I do the same with the Constitution.  We now have a Supreme Court that is torturing this precious old document with a contorted “federalist” pseudo-philosophy that is nothing more than window-dressing for a backward social and political agenda.  So here I take up Bruce’s challenge.


Here is Billy Collins’ poem:

INTRODUCTION TO POETRY

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
________
 

And here is what happened when I replaced the word “poetry” with “the Bible”:

INTRODUCTION TO THE BIBLE
(with an apology to Billy Collins)

I ask them to take the Bible
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into the Bible
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the Bible's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of the Bible
waving at its many authors’ names on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the Bible to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
 

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
_______
 

And here is what it looks like when I replace the word “poetry” with “the Constitution” - and you’ll notice the other embellishment I added:

INTRODUCTION TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION
(with a further apology to Billy Collins)

I ask them to take the Constitution
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into the Constitution
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the Constitution’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of the Constitution
waving at its many authors’ names on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the Constitution to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
 

They begin beating it with the stock of an AR 15 semi-automatic rifle
to find out what it really means.

____________
 

It’s time to embrace the nuances of the Constitution, and factor its historical context into our interpretations.  Like poetry, it lives.  It breathes.  It guides.  It illuminates.  And like poetry, it has no fixed meanings.  We need poets on the Supreme Court, not the ideological hacks that control it today….

(See more of my "musings" here...)