Mortality, Time, and Memory in Billy Collins's Musical Tables
The Small Poem as a Vessel for the Inevitable: Mortality, Time, and Memory in Musical Tables
In Musical Tables, Billy Collins assembles a collection of tiny poems that repeatedly circle the same gravitational pull: the awareness of death, the passage of time, and the strange persistence of memory. The thematic claim that emerges is that mortality and time are inescapable, but memory—and the art of the small poem itself—offers a way to hold onto what is fleeting, even when that holding is provisional, absurd, or tinged with irony. Collins does not offer consolation so much as a wry acknowledgment that we are all, as he writes in “The Dead of Winter,” going to die “in one month or another.” Yet the very brevity of his poems becomes a formal response to that inevitability: the small poem arrives and departs at once, mirroring the suddenness of life and the way memory returns unbidden, like dance music traveling across a dark lake.
Tracing the Theme Across the Collection
“Musical Tables”: The Game After the Music Stops
The title poem sets the tone. When the music stops, “no one knew what to do,” and the large tables are “always in the way.” The poem describes a game that becomes popular “in spite of its pointlessness,” then asks whether that pointlessness was the reason for its appeal. On the surface, this is a literal description of a party game, but the imagery resonates with mortality: the stopping of music suggests the end of life, and the tables—obstacles, furniture, the stuff of daily existence—remain in the way even after the music ceases. The game that follows is a stand-in for the rituals we create to fill the void after loss. Collins’s question—whether pointlessness is the appeal—cuts to the heart of how we cope with death. We invent games, routines, and even poems to give shape to the shapeless, and the absurdity of that effort is precisely what makes it human. The poem’s own brevity (six lines) enacts the theme: it stops almost as soon as it begins, leaving the reader with the same uncertainty the poem describes.
“Elegy”: The Search for the Dead in the Deck
In “Elegy,” the speaker turns over all fifty-two cards on the kitchen table, yet still thinks the deceased “must be hiding / somewhere in the deck.” The poem is a compact meditation on grief and the refusal to accept finality. The card game becomes a metaphor for memory: we shuffle through our recollections, looking for the person who is no longer there, convinced that they must be concealed among the familiar faces. The kitchen table—a domestic, everyday object—grounds the poem in the ordinary, while the act of turning over cards suggests a ritual of searching that can never succeed. The speaker’s persistence (“Still, I think”) reveals the stubbornness of memory, which refuses to let the dead disappear entirely. The poem’s title, “Elegy,” is ironic: a traditional elegy mourns and often consoles, but here the mourning is expressed through a futile game of solitaire. The small poem’s form—just five lines—mirrors the incompleteness of the search; there is no resolution, only the ongoing act of looking.
“A Memory”: Return as Music Across a Lake
“A Memory” offers a more hopeful, if still elusive, image. The memory “came back to me / not in the way / a thing might be returned / to its rightful owner / but like dance music / traveling in the dark / from one end / of a lake to the other.” The simile transforms memory from a possession to a sensory experience—something that arrives not as a solid object but as sound carried across water. The darkness of the lake suggests distance and time, while the music implies that memory is not a static image but a living, moving thing. The poem’s brevity (eight lines) allows the image to resonate without explanation. Here, memory is not a search (as in “Elegy”) but a gift that comes unbidden, a fleeting connection to the past that cannot be forced. The dance music also links to the title poem’s “music stopped,” suggesting that even after the music ends, its echo can return.
“The Dead of Winter” and “Physical”: Time’s Inevitable Markers
Two other poems ground the theme in the body and the calendar. “The Dead of Winter” bluntly states that “we will all die / in one month or another,” noting that many have already left in December while others “will stay on / to see in the new year.” The poem’s matter-of-fact tone strips death of drama, reducing it to a matter of scheduling. Time becomes a series of months, and death is simply the month that claims us. In “Physical,” the nurse’s quip that the speaker’s pulse is so slow she could take it with a sundial turns the body into a timepiece. The speaker sits in a garden, “ticking away,” while the nurse watches the shadow move. The sundial image conflates the body’s rhythms with the sun’s passage, suggesting that our mortality is written into the very movement of celestial bodies. The poem’s humor—the slow pulse, the sundial—does not mask the underlying truth: time is running out, and the body is its clock.
Character and Symbol Connections
The speaker across these poems is a consistent presence—an aging, observant figure who confronts mortality with a mix of irony and tenderness. In “Physical,” the speaker is the patient, subject to the nurse’s assessment; in “Elegy,” he is the mourner; in “A Memory,” he is the recipient of an unexpected recollection. The nurse, a minor character, appears only in “Physical,” but her role as a timekeeper reinforces the theme. The dog, introduced in the epigraph (chewing a carrot), is a symbol of the mundane, embodied present—a creature entirely absorbed in the moment, unaware of time’s passage. The dog’s face, as described by Nick Laird, offers a counterpoint to human anxiety: while we worry about death, the dog simply chews. The symbol of music and sound recurs in “Musical Tables” and “A Memory,” linking the cessation of music to death and the return of music to memory. Celestial bodies—the sun in “Physical,” the lake’s darkness in “A Memory”—mark the passage of time and the distance of the past.
Complexity and Contradiction
The collection does not offer a single, comforting answer. In “Musical Tables,” the pointlessness of the game is both a flaw and a possible source of appeal—a contradiction that suggests we may embrace meaninglessness precisely because it frees us from the burden of significance. Similarly, “Elegy” presents memory as a futile search, yet the speaker cannot stop searching; the contradiction between knowing the dead are gone and still looking for them is the very texture of grief. “A Memory” offers a more positive view, but even there, the memory travels “in the dark,” implying that what returns is not the thing itself but a distant echo. The Afterword complicates the theme further: Collins describes the small poem as a “flash, a gesture, a gambit without the game that follows,” and notes that it has “no room for landscape here, or easeful reflection.” This suggests that the small poem’s brevity is itself a response to mortality—a way of capturing a moment before it disappears, without the luxury of extended meditation. Yet the Afterword also celebrates the form’s ability to hold “humor and poignancy,” implying that even in the face of death, there is room for wit.
Study Questions and Answers
1. How does the title poem “Musical Tables” use the image of stopped music to comment on mortality?
The stopped music represents the end of life or a decisive break. The tables that are “always in the way” suggest the obstacles and routines that persist after loss. The game that follows—pointless yet popular—mirrors the rituals we create to cope with death, and the poem’s question about pointlessness invites readers to consider whether meaninglessness itself can be a source of comfort.
2. In “Elegy,” why does the speaker continue to search for the deceased in a deck of cards?
The search is a metaphor for memory’s refusal to accept finality. The speaker knows the person is gone, but the act of turning over cards represents the compulsive revisiting of memories, hoping to find the lost one hidden among familiar images. The poem suggests that grief is not a linear process but an ongoing, often futile, ritual.
3. How does “A Memory” differ from “Elegy” in its portrayal of memory?
“Elegy” portrays memory as an active, frustrated search, while “A Memory” presents it as a passive, unexpected arrival. The simile of dance music traveling across a dark lake suggests that memory comes to us unbidden, like sound carried over water, rather than something we can summon at will. This difference highlights the dual nature of memory: it can be both a source of pain and a gift.
4. What role does the nurse play in “Physical,” and how does the sundial image connect to the theme of time?
The nurse’s quip about taking the pulse with a sundial turns the body into a timekeeping device. The sundial measures time through the sun’s shadow, linking human mortality to celestial cycles. The nurse’s observation is humorous, but it underscores the inescapable passage of time and the body’s role as a clock that will eventually stop.
5. How does the Afterword’s description of the small poem relate to the collection’s treatment of mortality?
The Afterword describes small poems as arriving and departing at once, like a “flash” or “gesture.” This brevity mirrors the fleeting nature of life and memory. By embracing the small poem as a distinct form, Collins suggests that art can capture a moment of awareness without needing to explain or resolve it—just as we must accept the inevitability of death without finding a final answer. The form itself becomes a way of holding mortality at bay, if only for a moment.