Revisiting Billy Collins’ “Nightclub”

Bookmark #1: The joy of rereading books and finding new favorites that resonate.

It has only taken me nearly 23 years, but I have found my favorite poet: Billy Collins. He is a New York native, and the 2000-2003 United States Poet Laureate of America, and my copy of his book is basically a scrapbook at this point, complete with taped-in receipts, sprawling marginalia, and colorful doodles. The poems are silly and poignant and occasionally a little kitschy, and I like to reread them so I can talk to my younger self in the margins. These conversations span years and distances, and there’s always a pen marking that signals a different standout poem for various moments. Right now, it’s “Nightclub,” selected from The Art of Drowning (1995).

I first read Sailing Around the Room (2001) years ago when I randomly grabbed it off the poetry shelf at a used bookstore far from my home in Nashville. The synopsis on the back cover reads that “Collins often begins with the ordinary and end in the infinite.” I was sold when I read that. Back at home, I feel a specific duty to read certain books and to be specific about which ones I purchase for my collection, but when I’m traveling, I abandon that and buy intuitively. The outcomes are sporadic, but this one was a winner. Sometimes, the notion of where you found the book can be as charming as reading it. It accessorizes the experience.

When I visited my mom’s new house in Nashville recently, I dug through box after box to find this specific book. When I finally found it and began to read, I felt the ease, comfort, and a tiny upkick in energy which results from catching up with a friend over coffee. I swooned.

That struck me about “Nightclub” is how Collins cracks open the formula of a classic love song and turns lovelorn isolation into something soft and curling upward toward the light. Whatever makes you feel lonely is probably made of good stuff, like music. Nevermind the genre of music playing—just listen. Don’t just sit there and wait for music to happen to you. Be beautiful right now, and be the “music heard so deeply that it is not heard at all, but you are the music while the music lasts” because love for anyone, of any kind, should make noise.

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Three steps to enjoy “Nightclub:” (and I’ve bolded my favorite lines).

1. For best results, listen to Johnny Hartman's “You Are Too Beautiful” directly before reading, or if you feel like showing off, while reading.

2. Read this excerpt from T.S. Eliot’s poem “Dry Salvages” in The Four Quartets:

“For most of us, there is only the unattended

Moment, the moment in and out of time,

The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,

The wil thyme unseen, or the winter lightning

Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply

That it is not heard at all, but you are the music

While the music lasts.”

3. Read and reread it.

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“Nightclub”

You are so beautiful and I am a fool

to be in love with you

is a theme that keeps coming up

in songs and poems.

There seems to be no room for variation.

I have never heard anyone sing

I am so beautiful

and you are a fool to be in love with me,

even though this notion has surely

crossed the minds of women and men alike.

You are so beautiful, too bad you are a fool

is another one you don't hear.

Or, you are a fool to consider me beautiful.

That one you will never hear, guaranteed.

For no particular reason this afternoon

I am listening to Johnny Hartman

whose dark voice can curl around

the concepts of love, beauty, and foolishness

like no one else's can.

It feels like smoke curling up from a cigarette

someone left burning on a baby grand piano

around three o'clock in the morning;

smoke that billows up into the bright lights

while out there in the darkness

some of the beautiful fools have gathered

around little tables to listen,

some with their eyes closed,

others leaning forward into the music

as if it were holding them up,

or twirling the loose ice in a glass,

slipping by degrees into a rhythmic dream.

Yes, there is all this foolish beauty,

borne beyond midnight,

that has no desire to go home,

especially now when everyone in the room

is watching the large man with the tenor sax

that hangs from his neck like a golden fish.

He moves forward to the edge of the stage

and hands the instrument down to me

and nods that I should play.

So I put the mouthpiece to my lips

and blow into it with all my living breath.

We are all so foolish,

my long bebop solo begins by saying,

so damn foolish

we have become beautiful without even knowing it.