Three Poems by Billy Collins
NPR: Collins on "The Trouble with Poetry"
NPR: Collins on fame and being Poet Laureate
Billy Collins page at The Academy of American Poets

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. His most recent books are Nine Horses (2003) and The Trouble with Poetry (2005) . He is the guest editor for the 2006 Best American Poetry anthology.

Career
Collins is a distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College, City University of New York, where he taught from 1968 to 2001 and has remained a member of the faculty. 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" 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, 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.

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 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." The second Poetry 180 collection is entitled 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day

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Quotes:

"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." (1999)

"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." (2004)

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Three Poems:

Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,

and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.

When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton

while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.

[from Sailing Around the Room (2001)]

The Names

Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.
A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,
And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,
I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,
Then Baxter and Calabro,
Davis and Eberling, names falling into place
As droplets fell through the dark.
Names printed on the ceiling of the night.
Names slipping around a watery bend.
Twenty-six willows on the banks of a stream.
In the morning, I walked out barefoot
Among thousands of flowers
Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears,
And each had a name --
Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal
Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins.
Names written in the air
And stitched into the cloth of the day.
A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox.
Monogram on a torn shirt,
I see you spelled out on storefront windows
And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city.
I say the syllables as I turn a corner --
Kelly and Lee,
Medina, Nardella, and O'Connor.
When I peer into the woods,
I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden
As in a puzzle concocted for children.
Parker and Quigley in the twigs of an ash,
Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton,
Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple.
Names written in the pale sky.
Names rising in the updraft amid buildings.
Names silent in stone
Or cried out behind a door.
Names blown over the earth and out to sea.
In the evening -- weakening light, the last swallows.
A boy on a lake lifts his oars.
A woman by a window puts a match to a candle,
And the names are outlined on the rose clouds --
Vanacore and Wallace,
(let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound)
Then Young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z.
Names etched on the head of a pin.
One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel.
A blue name needled into the skin.
Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers,
The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son.
Alphabet of names in a green field.
Names in the small tracks of birds.
Names lifted from a hat
Or balanced on the tip of the tongue.
Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.
So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the
heart.

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. 

[from Sailing Around the Room (2001)]

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