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In the process of simplifying oneself, one often discovers the thing called voice.

Billy Collins

There are just long gaps where I can’t find a point of insertion, I can’t find a good opening line.
BILLY COLLINS

Air Fall Insertion Open Time Writing
I thought originally when I was in school and I wanted to be a poet, I knew that poets seemed to be miserable.
BILLY COLLINS

Miserable Poet School
Humor is just an ingredient. It’s always been in poetry. It kind of dropped out of poetry I think during the 19th and up to the mid-twentieth century. But it’s found its way back. And it’s simply an ingredient.
BILLY COLLINS

Dropped Found Ingriidient Poetry Simply
I stared up at the ebbing quarter moon and the stars scattered like a handful of salt across the faraway sky.
BILLY COLLINS

Across Faraway Moon Sky Stars
Now I would say at any given moment in American life, there are probably 45 poets in airplanes vectoring across the country heading towards…
BILLY COLLINS

Across Airplane Country Reading Towards
Every Day Is for the Thief is a vivid, episodic evocation of the truism that you can’t go home again; but that doesn’t mean you’re not free to try.
BILLY COLLINS

Day Every Home Mean Trying
Bugs Bunny is my muse.
BILLY COLLINS

Bugs Bunnies Creativity
The mind can be trained to relieve itself on paper.
BILLY COLLINS

Mind Paper Relieve Trained
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

Across Ant Confession Poem Shore Waving
I have one of these early memories where I’m in the back of my parents’ car, a place I loved to spend a lot of time as an only child, not having to fight with venomous siblings over the only toy.
BILLY COLLINS

Child Early Memories Parents Time Venomous
You come by your style by learning what to leave out. At first you tend to overwrite—embellishment instead of insight.
BILLY COLLINS

Embellishment Style Voice Writing
You either continue to write puerile bilge, or you change. In the process of simplifying oneself, one often discovers the thing called voice.
BILLY COLLINS

Simplifying Thing Voice
I’m very conscious of the fact that every line should have a cadence to it. It should contribute to the progress of the poem. And that the ending of the line is a way of turning the reader’s attention back into the interior of the poem.
BILLY COLLINS

Attention Conscious Poem Progress
The first line is the DNA of the poem; the rest of the poem is constructed out of that first line. A lot of it has to do with tone because tone is the key signature for the poem. The basis of trust for a reader used to be meter and end-rhyme.
BILLY COLLINS

Constructed DNA First Keys Signatures Time
I mean, the sonnet will simply tell you, that’s too many syllables or that’s too many lines or that’s the wrong place. So, instead of being alone, you’re in dialogue with the form.
BILLY COLLINS

Alone Dialogue Simply Sonnet Wrong
One of the ridiculous aspects of being a poet is the huge gulf between how seriously we take ourselves and how generally we are ignored by everybody else.
BILLY COLLINS

Differences Everybody Poetry Self

In the process of simplifying oneself, one often discovers the thing called voice.

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In the process of simplifying oneself, one often discovers the thing called voice.

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