In Billy Collins' poem "Picnic, Lightning", he makes great use of tone to convey his perceptions of both life and death. The tone grows increasingly morbid between the first three stanzas, creating an aura of death which pervades through the poem and demonstrates Collins' sentiment that death is sudden, dark, and unpredictable. However, a tonal shift in the final stanza relieves the tension created by the earlier tone, and introduces a new essence of happiness and light. The final stanza, therefore, conveys Collin's perception of life, and shows his joy and vigor for life in contrast (yet also in parallel) to his feelings about death.
The title of Collins' poem is notable in that it discusses a traumatic death-- death by lightning, inflicted without warning at what is supposed to be a joyous occasion, at a picnic-- in a cavalier manner. This, however, does not fully represent Collins' feelings towards death. Rather, it expresses the suddenness with which death may often arrive, and also conveys the sense of casualty with which we are often prone to using when discussing death, no matter how traumatic.
Collins' makes extensive use of imagery to help convey his tone. His diction also leans to the negative, propelling his tone further. He describes even flowers as limp and lifeless. However, his rapid shift in diction and imagery in the final stanza serves to emphasize the polarity of Collins' emotions. The sky becomes bright, the flowers budded, and the clouds whites. There is less of a sense of grey and dismal and doom.
Lastly, another notable feature of Collins' poem is the variation in structure between the first several stanzas and the last, mirroring the negative to positive tonal shirt. The first three stanzas, for example, all begin with capitalized letters, giving a sense of urgency and formality, while the last stanza begins with a lowercased word. This less formal, more fluid form of letters relaxed the final stanza and dispatches it from the rest of the poem.
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