Poet tells freshmen to scribble, not Hi-Lite.

Byline: Andrea Damewood The Register-Guard

Incoming University of Oregon freshmen were given a dire warning from their convocation speaker on Sunday: Hi-Liters are a tool of the devil.

Former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins - known for his firm conviction that poetry should be accessible to all readers - said students should instead pick up a pencil and scribble their thoughts in the margins.

During a convocation that drew several hundred to McArthur Court, Collins mixed stories and poetry, letting his poems become the message he wished to convey to his audience.

Collins read from a poem called "Marginalia," about his own experiences writing in the margins of texts, and notes he's read by others.

"The ideal reader is someone who reads with a dictionary and a pencil," he said. "You create a dialogue, a visible one, between yourself and the author."

But marking pens register only in monotone, leaving a slimy residue like a slug, said Collins, a distinguished professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York. He added that nearly every line in some of his students' books are a neon hue, as if to assure themselves they have read it.

Collins also offered up some romantic advice, courtesy of historic poets. He took the first two lines of a romantic poem by Jacques Crickillon, rewriting the rest as a sort of "professional courtesy" and retitling it "Litany."

"The poem is based on the idea of what women want," Collins said. "And all old poets think they know what women want. It's not romance, affection ... (or) loyalty. What women wanted was similes."

The poem begins with Crickillon's ode: "You are the bread and the knife, you are the crystal goblet and the wine." Collins, however, gets a bit more specific in defining his lover, employing such nonsequiturs as, " ... you are not even close to being the field of cornflowers at dusk."

Literary amnesia - when one spends their adult life reading, and then forgets it all - was a segue into what Collins said is every poet's favorite subject: death. "Just a warning, if you decide to major in English, you are majoring in death," he quipped.

The freshmen audience seemed to appreciate Collins' laid-back approach to a start-of-the-school-year lecture; fall term begins today.

"I actually enjoyed it," said Tiffany Focht, 18, from Madras. "I enjoyed the poetry and the humor mostly."

Collins' final message to students, however, was no joke.

"Participate in your education," he said. "Speak up in class, write in the margins; the margins of the world await your notation."