Billy Collins
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by Catherine Marenghi

This article is part of an ongoing series on poets and poetry with roots in San Miguel.

San Miguel de Allende has inspired poets for centuries. Some have merely passed through town, arriving for writing festivals and literary gatherings. Others have lingered for extended stays, focused intentionally on writing and creative rejuvenation. And some have made the town their permanent home.

Here are two examples of poems that directly celebrate San Miguel, written by two of the world's most outstanding poets on the occasion of their visiting San Miguel to speak at the San Miguel Writers' Conference. They are proof of San Miguel's enduring power to inspire and captivate, even for poets who are just passing through.

Popular American poet Billy Collins is the author of 13 collections of poetry including New York Times bestseller The Rain in Portugal, Aimless Love, Horoscopes for the Dead, Ballistics, The Trouble with Poetry, Nine Horses, Sailing Alone Around the Room, Questions About Angels, The Art of Drowning, and Picnic, Lightning. Collins served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003 and as New York State Poet from 2004 to 2006. In 2016 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

In 2017 Collins was a keynote speaker at the San Miguel Writers' Conference. When he took the podium in the main ballroom of the Hotel Real de Minas, he delighted his audience with the first draft of a poem he had written the prior evening – a song of praise for the unique natural sounds of San Miguel. That poem was later published under the title "The Symphony Orchestra of San Miguel de Allende" in his 2020 poetry collection Whale Day and Other Poems.

Even in his initial draft, which I was privileged to hear in its first public reading, Collins conveyed his trademark sense of humor and childlike whimsy, mixed with a deep reverence for the beauty of San Miguel's natural music.

By no coincidence, Collins is famously a music lover, incorporating his love of jazz into many of his poems and broadcasts, and he found in San Miguel a particular kind of music. His poem calls us to pay attention with our full ears, making the everyday experience of rooster calls and barking dogs soar to a state of divine grace.

In this poem, Collins combines his natural dry wit with his exquisite attention to detail – not just imagining "eggs," but, more specifically, three eggs, still warm. Not just mourning doves, but doves "still mourning our awful losses," making their presence all the more plaintive and personal. Collins disarms us with his wit, making him one of the most affable and accessible of poets, while still slyly revealing his poetic and artistic depth.

Margaret Atwood (1939-)

Best known for her dystopian novel A Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood has also established herself as an accomplished and celebrated poet. Atwood's rise began with her groundbreaking poetry, and she has continually returned to the form over her six-decade career.

Atwood is a Canadian novelist, poet, literary critic, and inventor. Since 1961, she has published 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of nonfiction, nine collections of short fiction, eight children's books, two graphic novels, and a number of small press editions of both poetry and fiction.

Atwood was also a keynote speaker at a San Miguel Writers' Conference, and her first visit inspired her to return again and again. Her poem "Frida Kahlo, San Miguel, Ash Wednesday" was published in the 2020 anthology 15: Celebrating Fifteen Years of Literary Excellence from the San Miguel Writers' Conference. It was later published in Atwood's poetry book Dearly in 2023.

In her preface to the poem in the 15 anthology, Atwood recalled that her first San Miguel visit included seeing an exhibit of Frida Kahlo letters, as well as a souvenir arcade with Kahlo's image branded on all manner of artifacts – boxes, mirrors, T-shirts, votives, crosses. The fact that Atwood's poem was written on Ash Wednesday is also meaningful, as she makes the connection between ashes and Kahlo's cremation. Atwood praises, in her words, "the Mexican genius for combining death and sadness with fertility and joy in symbols, as Frida did in her art. From brokenness can come beauty."

Atwood spent part of her time in Mexico visiting the Frida Kahlo Museum, also known as the Blue House (La Casa Azul), in the Coyoacán neighborhood in Mexico City. The building was Kahlo's birthplace, the home where she grew up, lived with her husband Diego Rivera for a number of years, and where she later died. Atwood was moved by the vivid colors and traditional clothing that Kahlo favored. Atwood's poem draws the connection between the modern-day cult of adoration for Kahlo with earlier cults of saints and martyrs. As Atwood put it, Kahlo represented "suffering transcended, in her case, through art."

In Atwood's case, suffering is transcended through poetry.

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Catherine Marenghi is a local poet, novelist and memoirist who has been active in the San Miguel literary scene for more than a decade. She has published three poetry books, a memoir, and a historic novel. A native of Massachusetts, she has made San Miguel her permanent home.

www.marenghi.com

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