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Billy Collins Biography

William James Collins, known as Billy Collins, (born March 22, 1941) is an American poet, appointed as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He has served as a Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York and is the Senior Distinguished Fellow of the Winter Park Institute, Florida. Collins was considered as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library (1992) and selected as the New York State Poet for 2004 through 2006. As of 2015, he is a teacher in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton.

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Billy Collins Quotes

But my heart is always propped up in a field on its tripod, ready for the next arrow.

Arrows, Fields, Heart, Propped, Ready, Tripod

I'm trying to write poems that involve beginning at a known place, and ending up at a slightly different place. I'm trying to take a little journey from one place to another, and it's usually from a realistic place, to a place in the imagination.

Imagination, Journey, Poems, Realistic, Writing

Particularly when I thought of myself as a Wallace Stevens acolyte, I wrote very difficult poetry and I was really guilty of not knowing what I was talking about. I was going for a kind of clever verbal effect. I was trying to sound linguistically or verbally interesting. I had a sense, I guess, from just reading a lot of poetry of how a poem would start and how it would end but really I didn't know what I was doing. It had very little connection to my life.

Clever, Guess, Guilty, Interesting, Knowing, Reading

I find it strange that - at least in my take on it - the people who are the most alarmed about the dire times we live in are the ones who seem to be humorless, in their taste for poetry anyway. Humor is just an ingredient. It's always been in poetry. It kind of dropped out of poetry I think during the 19th and up to the mid-twentieth century. But it's found its way back. And it's simply an ingredient.

Anyway, People, Simply, Take, Thinking, Way

Write the poem only you can write.

Poem, Write, Writing

You come by your style by learning what to leave out. At first you tend to overwrite—embellishment instead of insight. You either continue to write puerile bilge, or you change. In the process of simplifying oneself, one often discovers the thing called voice.

Bilge, Come, Style, Tend, Voice, Writing

The trouble with poetry is that it encourages the writing of more poetry.

Encourages, Poetry, Poetry Is, Trouble, Writing

By clarity I don't mean that we're always in kind of a simple area where everything is clear and comforting and understood. Clarity is certainly a way toward disorientation because if you don't start out - if the reader isn't grounded, if the reader is disoriented in the beginning of the poem, then the reader can't be led astray or disoriented later.

Astray, Clarity, Comforting, Grounded, Mean, Simple

I hope the poem, as it goes on, gets more complicated, a little more demanding, a little more ambiguous or speculative, so that we're drifting away from the casual beginning of the poem into something a little more serious.

Casual, Demanding, Goes On, Littles, Serious, Speculative

No one here likes a wet dog.

Dog, Likes, Wet, Wet Dogs

I try to presume that no one is interested in me. And I think experience bears that out. No one's interested in the experiences of a stranger - let's put it that way. And then you have difficulty combined with presumptuousness, which is the most dire trouble with poetry.

Interested, Presumptuousness, Thinking, Trying, Way

All they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with a rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.

Begin, Mean, Rope, Ties, Torture

The poem is not, as someone put it, deflective of entry. But the real question is, 'What happens to the reader once he or she gets inside the poem?' That's the real question for me, is getting the reader into the poem and then taking the reader somewhere, because I think of poetry as a kind of form of travel writing.

Kind, Real, Think, Thinking, Writing

So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.

Heart, Names, Room, Wall

I'm very conscious of the fact that every line should have a cadence to it. It should contribute to the progress of the poem. And that the ending of the line is a way of turning the reader's attention back into the interior of the poem.

Attention, Cadence, Line, Progress, Should Have, Way

Poetry is like standing on the edge of a lake on a moonlit night and the light of the moon is always pointing straight at you.

Edge, Lake, Lakes, Moon, Night, Poetry

Another trouble with poetry - and I'm gonna stop the list at two - is the presence of presumptuousness in poetry, the sense you get in a poem that the poet takes for granted an interest on the reader's part in the poet's autobiographical life, in the poet's memories, problems, difficulties and even minor perceptions.

Life, Memories, Perception, Poet, Poetry, Two

I write with a Uni-Ball Onyx Micropoint on nine-by-seven bound notebooks made by a Canadian company called Blueline. After I do a few drafts, I type up the poem on a Macintosh G3 and then send it out the door.

Company, Doors, Notebook, Notebooks, Onyx, Writing

I thought originally when I was in school and I wanted to be a poet, I knew that poets seemed to be miserable.

Miserable, Poet, Poets, School, Seemed, Thought

A trouble with poetry is the presence of presumptuousness in poetry, the sense you get in a poem that the poet takes for granted an interest on the reader's part in the poet's autobiographical life, in the poet's memories, problems, difficulties and even minor perceptions. I try to presume that no one is interested in me. And I think experience bears that out. No one's interested in the experiences of a stranger - let's put it that way. And then you have difficulty combined with presumptuousness, which is the most dire trouble with poetry.

Memories, Part, Perception, Perceptions, Poem, Thinking

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