Billy Collins
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William J. ("Billy") Collins (born March 22, 1941) is an American poet who served two terms as the 44th Poet Laureate of the United States, from 2001 to 2003. In his home state, he has been recognized as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library and selected as the New York State Poet for 2004. He is a graduate of the College of the Holy Cross and the University of California, Riverside.
Career
Collins is a distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College, City University of New York, where he taught from 1968 to 2001. More recently, he has taught and served as a visiting writer at Sarah Lawrence College. As U.S. Poet Laureate, he read his poem "The Names" [link] at a special joint session of the United States Congress on September 6, 2002, held to remember the victims of the 9/11 attacks.
In 1997, he recorded The Best Cigarette (ISBN 0965887308), a collection of 33 of his poems that would become a bestseller. In 2005, the CD's copyright was changed to a Creative Commons license allowing free, non-commercial distribution of the recording. He also recorded two of his poems for the audio versions of Garrison Keillor's collection Good Poems (2002, ISBN 0670031267).
Over the years, Poetry magazine has awarded him several prizes in recognition of poems they publish. During the 1990s, Collins has won [five such prizes]. The magazine also selected him as "Poet of the Year" in 1994. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation in 1993, and the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Work
Although Collins's poetry is often compared to that of Robert Frost, it is marked by a rejection of restrictive forms such as the sonnet, sestina, and villanelle. For instance, his poem "Sonnet" begins "All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now", and continues in this vein; the "sonnet" is fourteen lines, but does not rhyme and is not, until the final line, iambic pentameter. He invented the poetic form of the paradelle as a hoax to parody the villanelle, using his mock "Paradelle for Susan"; the paradelle is emblematic of his rejection of formal poetry.
In his work, Collins has also spoken out against obtuse constructions and over-interpretation of poems. Most of Collins's work is clear and accessible to lay readers and occasionally critical of poets writing only for other poets or academics. Collins shares this outlook with his successor as poet laureate, American poet Ted Kooser.
As poet laureate, Collins published a collection of poems called Poetry 180, a collection of 180 poems (one for each day of the typical school year) that he considers accessible to the majority of readers. Collins chooses to use poems with more simple language, but they are all extradordinary. Billy Collins is in the center of the movement to re-popularize poetry amoung adolescent readers. He is a great man, influencing the youth of the world for the better. Collins now has two Poetry 180 collections, the first of which he opens with his own poem "Introduction to Poetry", a poem that encourages enjoyment of poetry and discourages interpretation that would "tie the poem to a chair with rope/ and torture a confession out of it" or join those who "begin beating it with a hose/ to find out what it really means." he sugests that readers "water ski across the surface." [link]
Quotations
- (from 1999): As I'm writing, I'm always reader conscious. I have one reader in mind, someone who is in the room with me, and who I'm talking to, and I want to make sure I don't talk too fast, or too glibly. Usually I try to create a hospitable tone at the beginning of a poem. Stepping from the title to the first lines is like stepping into a canoe. A lot of things can go wrong.
- (from 2004): Moving from the position of United States poet laureate to New York State poet laureate might seem like a demotion or a drop in rank to the military-minded. It might even appear that I am heading toward eventually being crowned laureate of my ZIP code. But in fact, it is very gratifying to be honored again as a representative of poetry, this time by my native state where I grew up — more or less — and continue to live.
Bibliography
Poems
- The Trouble With Poetry and Other Poems, (2005, ISBN 037550382X)
- Nine Horses (2002, ISBN 14000061776)
- Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems (2001, ISBN 0375503803)
- Picnic, Lightning (1998, ISBN 0822940663)
- The Art of Drowning (1995, ISBN 0822938936), which was a Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize finalist
- Questions About Angels (1991, ISBN 0822942119), the winner (two years later) of the National Poetry Series competition
- The Apple That Astonished Paris (1988, ISBN 1557280231)
- Video Poems (1980)
- Pokerface (1977)
Anthologies
- 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Everyday Life ( 2005, ISBN 0812972961)
- Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry, ( 2003 ISBN 0812968875)
External links
- [The Best Cigarette - Billy Collins web site, with audio downloads]
- [Author interview on failbetter.com]
- [Billy Collins Fan site]
- [Steven Barclay Agency for Bookings - web page with a list of external links]
- [Griffin Poetry Prize biography (2004 judge and award emcee)]
- [Billy Collins at poets.org]
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