Billy Collins, cigarettes are bad.

The Best Cigarette by Billy Collins

There are many that I miss
having sent my last one out a car window
sparking along the road one night, years ago.

The heralded one, of course:
after sex, the two glowing tips
now the lights of a single ship;
at the end of a long dinner
with more wine to come
and a smoke ring coasting into the chandelier;
or on a white beach,
holding one with fingers still wet from a swim.

How bittersweet these punctuations
of flame and gesture;
but the best were on those mornings
when I would have a little something going
in the typewriter,
the sun bright in the windows,
maybe some Berlioz on in the background.
I would go into the kitchen for coffee
and on the way back to the page,
curled in its roller,
I would light one up and feel
its dry rush mix with the dark taste of coffee.

Then I would be my own locomotive,
trailing behind me as I returned to work
little puffs of smoke,
indicators of progress,
signs of industry and thought,
the signal that told the nineteenth century
it was moving forward.
That was the best cigarette,
when I would steam into the study
full of vaporous hope
and stand there,
the big headlamp of my face
pointed down at all the words in parallel lines. 

 

In this poem, I feel Billy Collins is using his cigarette as a metaphor for a train. After reading various articles about trains and the perceptions people had towards them, the success of the cigarette industry is comparable to that of the train industry, due its popularity and influence amongst Americans.

However in the articles there was one negative perception of the train. Like a cigarette, the train seems harmless at first, but over time it because evident that there are negative effects. For cigarette, obvious health problems will arise, but for trains there are problems of exploitation and the underdevelopment of cities, all of which can have negative effects on a person's well being. 

From an environmental perspective, the negative effects of the train can be seen when Collins says, "little puffs of smoke/ indicators of progress". In the 19th century, people did not take the environment as seriously as people do today. The more people utilized the train, they were more likely to get ahead. However, they were not thinking in the long run because with every puff of smoke a train made, they were damaging the environment. Also, the smoke emitted by the trains can be related to the corruption within the train industry. In one if the articles it said that the owners of the various train companies had a strong influence in politics. When smoke/pollution is emitted into the environment, it never fully goes away. The smoke from a train is often black, and with the more corruption of a train industry, the cloud of black smoke over the train is going to keep growing until it completely kills the environment.