You come by your style by learning what to leave out. At first you tend to overwrite—embellishment instead of insight.

BILLY COLLINS

black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

You come by your style by learning what to leave out. At first you tend to overwrite—embellishment instead of insight.

Billy Collins

Related Topics

Embellishment

Usually the poems are written in one sitting. There’s always a groping towards some satisfying ending. But I’d say the hardest part is not writing. Once the writing starts, it’s too pleasurable to think of it as a difficulty.
BILLY COLLINS

Once Pleasurable Sitting
I always think W.S. Merwin’s poems will last of anyone writing today. If I had to bet on posterity I would bet Merwin.

BILLY COLLINS

I always think W.S. Merwin’s poems will last of anyone writing today. If I had to bet on posterity I would bet Merwin.
BILLY COLLINS

Finding Yourself
I write with a Uni-Ball Onyx Micropoint on nine-by-seven bound notebooks made by a Canadian company called Blueline. After I do a few drafts, I type up the poem on a Macintosh G3 and then send it out the door.

BILLY COLLINS

I write with a Uni-Ball Onyx Micropoint on nine-by-seven bound notebooks made by a Canadian company called Blueline. After I do a few drafts, I type up the poem on a Macintosh G3 and then send it out the door.
BILLY COLLINS

Doors Notebook
I was influenced by the Beats because I actually just began to commit adolescence around 1955, when “Howl” and Rebel Without a Cause and a lot of other new things were popping up.
BILLY COLLINS

Adolescence Around Began Commit
But my heart is always propped up in a field on its tripod, ready for the next arrow.
BILLY COLLINS

Arrows Fields
…pleasure, of course, is a slippery word…. Our pleasures ultimately belong to us, not to the pleasure’s source.
BILLY COLLINS

Courses Source
Poetry is like standing on the edge of a lake on a moonlit night and the light of the moon is always pointing straight at you.
BILLY COLLINS

Lakes Pointing
I see woefully obscure poetry as simply a kind of verbal rudeness.

BILLY COLLINS

I see woefully obscure poetry as simply a kind of verbal rudeness.
BILLY COLLINS

Obscure Rudeness
But some nights, I must tell you, I go down there after everyone has fallen asleep. I swim back and forth in the echoing blackness. I sing a love song as well as I can, lost for a while in the home of the rain.
BILLY COLLINS

Echoing Everyone Tell
You, quote, find your voice, unquote, when you are able to invent this one character who resembles you, obviously, and probably is more like you than anyone else on earth, but is not the equivalent to you.

BILLY COLLINS

You, quote, find your voice, unquote, when you are able to invent this one character who resembles you, obviously, and probably is more like you than anyone else on earth, but is not the equivalent to you.
BILLY COLLINS

Eqiuipvalent Resembles
I can’t picture myself starting out aiming to do anything or having much of an agenda.I think in writing a poem, I’m making some tonal adjustments, and it took me a long time to allow anything like fun into my poetry.

BILLY COLLINS

I can’t picture myself starting out aiming to do anything or having much of an agenda.I think in writing a poem, I’m making some tonal adjustments, and it took me a long time to allow anything like fun into my poetry.
BILLY COLLINS
When you get a poem [in a public place], it happens to you so suddenly that you don’t have time to deploy your anti-poetry deflector shields that were installed in high school.

BILLY COLLINS

When you get a poem [in a public place], it happens to you so suddenly that you don’t have time to deploy your anti-poetry deflector shields that were installed in high school.
BILLY COLLINS

Inspiration Motivation
Bill Hicks
BILL HICKS

Christian Day One
Billy Collins
BILLY COLLINS

Feels Offering
I’m a line-maker. I think that’s what makes poets different from prose-writers. That’s the main way. We think, not just in sentences the way prose writers do but also in lines. So we’re doing these two things at the same time.

BILLY COLLINS

I’m a line-maker. I think that’s what makes poets different from prose-writers. That’s the main way. We think, not just in sentences the way prose writers do but also in lines. So we’re doing these two things at the same time.
BILLY COLLINS

Two
I knew that poets seemed to be miserable.
BILLY COLLINS

Seemed

You come by your style by learning what to leave out. At first you tend to overwrite—embellishment instead of insight.

Related Topics

More Billy Collins Quotes