Billy Collins

For the boxer, see Billy Collins (boxer)

William A. ("Billy") Collins (born March 22, 1941) is an American poet. He served two terms as the Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. 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.

Biography

William James "Billy" Collins was born in New York City on March 22, 1941 to William and Katherine Collins. He graduated with a bachelor's degree from the College of the Holy Cross in 1963 and received his doctorate from the University of California, Riverside.

Collins is a distinguished professor of English at Lehman College in the Bronx, where he joined the faculty in 1968 and has taught for over thirty years. Additionally, he is a founding Advisory Board member of the CUNY Institute for Irish-American Studies at Lehman College. He also has taught and served as a visiting writer at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. Collins was named U.S. Poet Laureate in 2001 and held the title until 2003. Collins served as Poet Laureate for the State of New York from 2004 until 2006.

As U.S. Poet Laureate, Collins read his poem "The Names" [1] 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 0-9658873-0-8), a collection of 34 of his poems that would become a bestseller. In 2005, the CD was re-released under 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 0-670-03126-7). In 2005, he recorded "Billy Collins Live: A Performance at the Peter Norton Symphony Space" in New York City. Collins was introduced by the actor, Bill Murray.

Over the years, Poetry magazine has awarded him several prizes in recognition of poems they publish. During the 1990s, Collins won five such prizes. The magazine also selected him as "Poet of the Year" in 1994. In 2005 Collins was the first annual recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for Humor in Poetry, bestowed by the Poetry Foundation (Poetry Magazine). 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 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. The first paradelle anthology, The Paradelle, edited by Theresa M. Welford, was published in January 2006, showing that the inventiveness of Collins, no matter the purpose, serves to inspire other poets.

In his work, Collins has also spoken out against obtuse constructions and over-interpretation of poems. Most of Collins's work is clear and understandable to lay readers and occasionally critical of poets writing only for other poets or academics, which is not to say that Collins's work is simplistic or lacking in artistic merit. Collins shares his occasionally critical outlook of poets who write only for other poets 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 appropriate poetry with which to introduce high schoolers to the form. Collins is in the center of the movement to re-popularize poetry among adolescent readers. Collins believes that exposing high schoolers to clear, meaningful contemporary poetry will whet their appetites for poetry and help them see that it is not boring or inaccessible. 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 suggests that readers "water ski across the surface." [2]

Collins' poetry has often been called accessible, a term he dislikes, saying it suggests metaphorical ramps for "poetically handicapped people." He prefers the word "hospitable" for his poetry. In that vein, he believes that a good poem is one that starts out simple and welcoming and then shifts into more complex themes. He calls this "travel poetry," referring to mental rather than physical travel.

Critical reception

Many readers have remarked on Collins's unusual popularity for a poet. Some poets and reviewers criticize Collins for being too "accessible," meaning that his readers connect with and understand his poems. Those critical of Collins's poetry are of a mind to believe that if a poem can be read and understood by just anyone, surely it must not be a quality poem. To be high art, they believe, means that a poem must reserve some part of itself to the privileged few, something Collins's work does not do.

On the other hand, a number of journals have reviewed Collins's work far more favorably. According to Entertainment Weekly, "Billy Collins is a modern-day Robert Frost. In plain language free from pretension, he takes ordinary subjects (summer-camp crafts, time zones), and plunders their insides until the inner mystery pops out." [3]

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

Poetry

• The Trouble With Poetry and Other Poems, (2005, ISBN 0-375-50382-X)
• Nine Horses (2002, ISBN 0-375-50381-1), named a notable book of the year by the New York Times Book Review
• Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems (2001, ISBN 0-375-50380-3), named a notable book of the year by the New York Times Book Review
• Picnic, Lightning (1998, ISBN 0-8229-4066-3)
• The Art of Drowning (1995, ISBN 0-8229-3893-6), which was a Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize finalist
• Questions About Angels (1991, ISBN 0-8229-4211-9), the winner (two years later) of the National Poetry Series competition
• The Apple That Astonished Paris (1988, ISBN 1-55728-023-1)
• Video Poems (1980)
• Pokerface (1977)

External links

• Podcast: Collins reading during the Key West Literary Seminar, 2003
• Watch a collection of 11 animated poems read aloud by Billy Collins
• 33 poems read aloud by Billy Collins, no charge (Creative Commons)
• Poems by Billy Collins at PoetryFoundation.org
• Author interview with Collins in Guernica Magazine (Guernicamag.com)
• Poem by Collins
• 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
• Review of the opus of Billy Collins at The Contemporary Poetry Review
• Billy Collins at poetenladen.de (poetshop)