A little Billy, for a start

Currently reading ...

Questions about Angels by Billy Collins

People who do not like poetry like poetry written by Billy Collins. The man is a genius. And hilarious. And coming to Minneapolis in three weeks and two days.

You'd better believe that yours truly has shelled out $75 to hear him speak. I don't even feel bad about it. At all.


Here. Tell me what you think about the title poem. It's one of my favorites.

Questions about Angels
Of all the questions you might want to ask
about angels, the only one you ever hear
is how many can dance on the head of a pin.

No curiosity about how they pass the eternal time
besides circling the Throne chanting in Latin
or delivering a crust of bread to a hermit on earth
or guiding a boy and girl across a rickety wooden bridge.

Do they fly through God's body and come out singing?
Do they swing like children from the hinges
of the spirit world saying their names backwards and forwards?
Do they sit alone in little gardens changing colors?

What about their sleeping habits, the fabric of their robes,
their diet of unfiltered divine light?
What goes on inside their luminous heads? Is there a wall
these tall presences can look over and see hell?

If an angel fell off a cloud, would he leave a hole
in a river and would the hole float along endlessly
filled with the silent letters of every angelic word?

If an angel delivered the mail, would he arrive
in a blinding rush of wings or would he just assume
the appearance of the regular mailman and
whistle up the driveway reading the postcards?

No, the medieval theologians control the court.
The only question you ever hear is about
the little dance floor on the head of a pin
where halos are meant to converge and drift invisibly.

It is designed to make us think in millions,
billions, to make us run out of numbers and collapse
into infinity, but perhaps the answer is simply one:
one female angel dancing alone in her stocking feet,
a small jazz combo working in the background.

She sways like a branch in the wind, her beautiful
eyes closed, and the tall thin bassist leans over
to glance at his watch because she has been dancing
forever, and now it is very late, even for musicians.



Beautiful, right? Told you so. This blog will touch on a lot of Collins' work since I'm such a huge fan. To be honest, Billy Collins is such an incredible writer that being a fan is a little like being a fan of the Beatles. I mean, really, who isn't? But there's no denying it.


Currently writing ...
a scene introducing Ellen

Ellen Conner is one of the characters in my novel, which you'll learn a little about through my blog. The main character is Neely Richter, but I'll talk about her more later. For now, I am working on Ellen.

Ellen is a fictional sophomore in high school, obsessed with fantasy literature and jazz music. She's inspired by my friend Lauren, who is brilliant and artistic and hilarious, but Ellen is not Lauren. Ellen is actually a very blunt, no-nonsense, boys-are-yucky tenth grader who knows the history of pixies and a thing or two about unicorns.

It's interesting working on Ellen's character because she is being grafted into my book much like a Gentile. The entire story has been written with no Ellen character, and then--bam!--I realize that my book is missing a teenaged influence. Enter Ellen.