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.

Billy Collins

Categorized in : Thinking Memories Perception

One of the ridiculous aspects of being a poet is the huge gulf between how seriously we take ourselves and how generally we are ignored by everybody else.

Billy Collins

differences poetry self

But tomorrow, dawn will come the way I picture her, barefoot and disheveled, standing outside my window in one of the fragile cotton dresses of the poor. She will look in at me with her thin arms extended, offering a handful of birdsong and a small cup of light.

Billy Collins

light offering bird

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.

Billy Collins

moon lakes night

A motto I've adopted is, if at first you don't succeed, hide all evidence that you ever tried.

Billy Collins

motto succeed firsts

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

Billy Collins

arrows fields heart

In the process of simplifying oneself, one often discovers the thing called voice.

Billy Collins

oneself voice process

The mind can be trained to relieve itself on paper.

Billy Collins

paper mind

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

Billy Collins

wall names heart

Nationalism is a type of insanity in which the boundaries of a land replace God.

Billy Collins

land boundaries insanity

But tonight, the lion of contentment has placed a warm heavy paw on my chest.

Billy Collins

lions contentment tonight

While the novelist is banging on his typewriter, the poet is watching a fly in the windowpane.

Billy Collins

novelists poet typewriters

Write the poem only you can write.

Billy Collins

writing

A sentence starts out like a lone traveler heading into a blizzard at midnight, tilting into the wind, one arm shielding his face, the tails of his thin coat flapping behind him.

Billy Collins

midnight tails wind

Introduction To Poetry I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author's name on the shore. But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.

Billy Collins

wall names mean

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.

Billy Collins

real writing thinking

I'm speaking to someone I'm trying to get to fall in love with me. I'm trying to speak intimately to one person. That should be clear. I'm not speaking to an audience. I'm not writing for the podium. I'm just writing, trying to write in a fairly quiet tone to one other reader who is by herself, or himself, and I'm trying to interrupt some silence in their life, which is utterance.

Billy Collins

falling-in-love silence writing

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.

Billy Collins

rope ties mean

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.

Billy Collins

style voice writing

I can hear the library humming in the night,

Billy Collins

night book son

And I should mention the light which falls through the big windows this time of day italicizing everything it touches.

Billy Collins

light window fall