Billy Collins

Happy Birthday to Billy Collins who wrote this poem for his students:

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 wrote his first poem at age seven. While riding in the car with his parents, he wrote about a sailboat on the East River. As a teenager he said, "I responded fully to Kerouac, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti's 'Coney Island of the Mind' — still a good title — Gregory Corso and others. But mostly I was a Catholic high school boy in the suburbs who fantasized about stealing a car and driving non-stop to Denver. I probably would have done it, but I didn't have access to those special driving pills Neal Cassady had. Plus, there was always a test to study for, or band practice."

In graduate school, he was convinced that writing confusing poems was a sign of greatness. He said, "I wrote very difficult poetry and I was really guilty of not knowing what I was talking about."

Then Collins started writing poetry that was direct and readable. His first published poems were just a few lines long, and they were published in Rolling Stone. He said,  "I thought writing poetry was like blowing out birthday candles — you had to do it in one breath."

Billy Collins said: "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."

Creative Write:  Write a poem in "one breath" and take us along for a ride.