Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0006525, Thu, 2 May 2002 22:39:50 -0700

Subject
Billy Collins
Date
Body
The message below from Clarence Brown appeared last December. I have a new
book by Collins, _Sailing Alone Around the Room_, and the poem "Picnic,
Lightning" is in there as well, epigraph and all (p. 98). But this edition
also has a new poem called "The Butterfly Effect" which I suspect even
Nabokov might have appreciated (p. 151).

Galya Diment



From: Clarence Brown <doctorsoup1@juno.com>

The new book of poems by the new Poet Laureate of the United States,
Billy Collins, is a runaway best seller. The title is Picnic, Lightning
(University of Pittsburgh Press). I knew at once that this phrase came
from Lolita, but mistakenly thought that it turned up in Humbert's musing
on what might befall Charlotte and others at Hour Glass Lake. I finally
located it on p.12 of the novel. So did Billy Collins, who quotes the
relevant sentence as the epigraph to the title poem (p.24): "My very
photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was
three."

Clarence Brown