Poetry Sunday: Fishing on the Susquehanna in July

Billy Collins is a very successful modern American poet. He has served as Poet Laureate of the country in the early part of the century, and he is lauded and praised by critics. Moreover, his books of poetry are moderately successful in sales, which is not something you can say about a lot of poets.

I've always enjoyed Collins' poetry. He writes with a quirky sense of humor which I appreciate. One such poem that reveals that sense of humor is this one.

Fishing on the Susquehanna in July
by Billy Collins
I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna or on any river for that matter to be perfectly honest. Not in July or any month have I had the pleasure--if it is a pleasure-- of fishing on the Susquehanna. I am more likely to be found in a quiet room like this one-- a painting of a woman on the wall, a bowl of tangerines on the table-- trying to manufacture the sensation of fishing on the Susquehanna. There is little doubt that others have been fishing on the Susquehanna, rowing upstream in a wooden boat, sliding the oars under the water then raising them to drip in the light. But the nearest I have ever come to fishing on the Susquehanna was one afternoon in a museum in Philadelphia when I balanced a little egg of time in front of a painting in which that river curled around a bend under a blue cloud-ruffled sky, dense trees along the banks, and a fellow with a red bandanna sitting in a small, green flat-bottom boat holding the thin whip of a pole. That is something I am unlikely ever to do, I remember saying to myself and the person next to me. Then I blinked and moved on to other American scenes of haystacks, water whitening over rocks, even one of a brown hare who seemed so wired with alertness I imagined him springing right out of the frame. I might say that I have experienced fishing on the Susquehanna in  July in the same way as Billy Collins and I have enjoyed it every bit as much as he did!