Billy Collins
Poet; Former U.S. Poet Laureate
One of the most popular living poets in the United States, Billy Collins was born in New York City in 1941. Collins is the author of nine books of poetry, including She Was Just Seventeen (2006), The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems (2005), Nine Horses (2002), and Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems (2001). His work appears regularly in such periodicals as Poetry, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Harper's Magazine, and has been featured in various textbooks and anthologies, including those for the Pushcart Prize and the annual Best American Poetry series. Between 2001 and 2004, Collins served two terms at the 11th Poet Laureate of the United States. In his home state, Collins has been recognized as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library (1992) and selected as the New York State Poet for 2004. Other honors include fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation, and the first annual Mark Twain Prize for Humor in Poetry. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College in the Bronx, where has taught for over thirty years.
Ideas recorded at the 2007 Aspen Ideas Festival on: 7/4/07
If we start doing something about climate change now, it’ll be a lot different from starting five years from now.
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A poet is not terribly unhappy that poetry has a small audience.
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Artists are just people who somehow didn’t allow that natural ability in childhood to be killed off.
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The joy in writing poetry is being down on your hands and knees with the language.
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“When you’re not writing, there’s an anxiety about whether you will ever write again,” says Collins.
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Collins’ childhood was filled with poetry and practical jokes.
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Billy Collins reads his poem, “Questions About Angels.”
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A musician of sorts.
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First, a nice car, then we think of others.
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America needs to find a new way of thinking.
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We should be over war by now.
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One’s faith can survive a split between theology and iconography.
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The poet is just as responsible for a small audience.
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Coleridge’s “Conversation” poems inspire much of Collins’ work.
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Asking, what does the poem mean? kills the poem, Collins says.
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Each poem is a journey, and the reader is meant to come along.
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Everything flows from death.
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Getting writers to talk about their writing is harder than you think.
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Billy Collins, on his fraught relationship with his teachers.
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