Billy Collins’s “The Death of the Hat”
May 12th, 2007Save as PDF
The images in this wonderful poem are so strong, you may never be able to look at a man in a hat, especially a man in a hat in a grainy old black-and-white photo or movie — without thinking of Billy Collins’s words. Without eulogizing the hat, Collins makes it represent a whole world of loss — lost values, lost innocence, not to mention lost style. Which came first — the "greatest generation" or the hat? And when JFK killed off the hat by going bareheaded to his 1961 inauguration, did something else die as well?
The Death of the Hat
Once every man wore a hat.
In the ashen newsreels,
the avenues of cities
are broad rivers flowing with hats.
The ballparks swelled
with thousands of strawhats.
Brims and bands,
rows of men smoking
and cheering in shirtsleeves.
Hats were the law.
They went without saying.
You noticed a man without a hat in a crowd.
You bought them from Adams or Dobbs
who branded your initials in gold
on the inside band.
Trolleys crisscrossed the city.
Steamships sailed in and out of the harbor.
Men with hats gathered on the docks.
There was a person to block your hat
and a hatcheck girl to mind it
while you had a drink
or ate a steak with peas and a baked potato.
In your office stood a hat rack.
The day war was declared
everyone in the street was wearing a hat.
And they were wearing hats
when a ship loaded with men sank in the icy sea.
My father wore one to work every day
and returned home
carrying the evening paper,
the winter chill radiating from his overcoat.
But today we go bareheaded
into the winter streets,
stand hatless on frozen platforms.
Today the mailboxes on the roadside
and the spruce trees behind the house
wear cold white hats of snow.
Mice scurry from the stone walls at night
In their thin fur hats
to eat the birdseed that has spilled.
And now my father, after a life of work,
wears a hat of earth,
and on top of that,
a lighter one of cloud and sky – a hat of wind.
May 13th, 2007 at 7:15 am
;) And, if you were bald, as my father, you surely wore a hat. And he was quite pleased when golf hats became fashion as he could wear these on the weekend.
May 16th, 2007 at 10:42 am
A terrific poem. Thanks, John.
Does anyone (besides me) remember a phenomena known as “straw hat day”? This was, if my recollection serves me correctly, a Monday several weeks following Labor Day after which it was no longer acceptable to wear a straw hat. Or was “straw hat day” was a day in May or June, only after which it was acceptable to wear a straw hat? I guess that my memory is not serving me so well. In any event, I do think that all men switched over from felt to straw (and visa versa) at pretty much the same time.
May 29th, 2008 at 5:10 pm