Banana School
Billy Collins

The day I learned that monkeys
as well as chimps, baboons, and gorillas
all peel their bananas from the other end
and use the end we peel from as a handle,
I immediately made the switch.

I wasted no time in passing this wisdom on
to family, friends, and even strangers
as I am now passing it on to you—
a tip from the top, the banana scoop,
the inside primate lowdown.

I promise: once you try it
you will never go back except
to regret the long error of your ways.

And if you do not believe me,
swing by the local zoo some afternoon.
with a banana in your pocket
and try peeling it in front of the cage
of an orangutan or capuchin monkey,
and as you begin, notice
how the monkeys stop what they’re doing,
if they are doing anything at all,
to nod their brotherly approval through the bars.

Better still, try it out on the big silverback gorilla.
See if you can get his dark eyes to brighten a bit
as the weight of him sits there in his cage
the same way Gertrude Stein is sitting
in that portrait of her she never liked by Picasso.


Billy Collins, “Banana School” from Whale Day and Other Poems. © 2020 Billy Collins published by Random House, 2020. (buy now)

It’s the birthday of American composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim (1930) (books by this author), widely known for his musicals West Side Story (1957), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), and Into the Woods (1987). Sondheim has won eight Tony Awards, more than any other composer. His life in the theater began at the age of nine when he saw his first Broadway musical. It was called Very Warm for May. Sondheim says, “The curtain went up and revealed a piano. A butler took a duster and brushed it up, tinkling the keys. I thought that was thrilling.”

Sondheim grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan the son of a Seventh Avenue dress manufacturer. His parents were wealthy but neglectful, and it wasn’t until he was 10 years old and befriended James Hammerstein, the son of legendary lyricist Oscar Hammerstein, that he felt accepted and loved. Oscar Hammerstein took Sondheim under his wing, teaching him about lyrics and harmony.

Stephen Sondheim published two books on his collected works, Finishing the Hat (2010), and Look, I Made a Hat (2011). Sondheim died in November of last year at the age of 91.

It’s the birthday of the prolific novelist James Patterson (books by this author), born in Newburgh, New York (1947).  Patterson claims two spots in the Guinness Book of World Records: he is the first author to sell one million e-books, and he has had the most New York Times No. 1 best-sellers of any single author. He sells more than Stephen King, Dan Brown, and John Grisham combined.

He writes seven days a week, every week. Last year he wrote two novels and more than 3,000 pages of other outlines, but he still finds time to play golf, have lunch with friends, and catch up on favorite TV shows in the evening. He writes for adults, kids, and teens, and never runs out of ideas. He gets so many ideas, in fact, that he often hires co-authors to flesh out the detailed outlines he gives them. His publisher — Little, Brown — has a team of 12 staffers that handle Patterson’s books, and Patterson’s only. And he’s demanding, especially of the marketing team. “I know what I want in all my books,” he told Vanity Fair. “It’s my way or the highway. I know who my readers are and how to engage them, how to scare them, how to get people to feel for the characters, how to make my readers laugh.”

His most recent novel, co-written with Dolly Parton, is Run Rose Run (2022).

It’s the birthday of American poet Billy Collins (1941) (books by this author), who once said, “While the novelist is banging on his typewriter, the poet is watching a fly in the window pane.” Collins is widely considered the most popular poet in America.

Billy Collins grew up in Queens. His mother was a nurse who could recite verse on numerous subjects and his father was an electrician who used to bring home copies of Poetry Magazine. Collins was a focused and voracious reader, tackling Compton’s Encyclopedia at the age of four before moving on to books like Black Beauty, The Yearling, and the Lassie series. His mother read to him often, and, Collins says, “I have a secret theory that people who are addicted to reading are almost trying to re-create the joy, the comfortable joy of being read to as a child by a parent or a friendly uncle or an older sibling. Being read to as a child is one of the great experiences in life.”

Collins never attended a writing program or took writing workshops, though he did meet poet Robert Frost when Frost visited his class at Holy Cross College. The students were shy, though, so Frost spent most of the evening talking to the Jesuits. Collins remembers mostly staring into his soup. He published his first poems in the back of Rolling Stone magazine. They paid $35.00 a poem. He didn’t publish his first book until he was 40 years old. He said, “I thought I would be completely content if I was recognized at some later point in my life as a third-rate Wallace Stevens.”

Billy Collins uses a Uni-Ball Onyx Micropoint pen in 9 x 7 notebooks to draft his poems before typing them out. When he thinks he might have enough for a book, he puts all the pages on the floor and walks on top of them in his stocking feet, trying to figure out the order. He revises his work carefully, he says, because, “Revision can grind a good impulse to dust.”

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.^®

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