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I think my poems are slightly underrated by the word accessible.

Billy Collins

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

Arrows Fields Heart
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

Fun Thinking Writing
A sentence starts out like a lone traveler heading into a blizzard at midnight, tilting into the wind, one arm shielding his face, the tails of his thin coat flapping behind him.
BILLY COLLINS

Coat Floating Midnight Tails Wind
(Again I’m trying to give you a finite version of this career.) And then I came under the sway of Wallace Stevens when I was in college and graduate school, and basically set as a life goal the ambition of writing third-rate Wallace Stevens.
BILLY COLLINS

Ambition Basically Career Goal Graduation Version
High School is the place where poetry goes to die.
BILLY COLLINS

Dies High School
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

Character Earth Eqiuipvalent Resembles Voice
But I think you could also put it a different way. 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

Different Obviously Probably Unquote Way
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

Different Thinking Two
I could feel the day offering itself to me, and I wanted nothing more than to be in the moment-but which moment? Not that one, or that one, or that one.
BILLY COLLINS

Feels Moments Offering
It’s a good thing to get poetry off the shelves and more into public life.
BILLY COLLINS

Good Life Public Shelves Things
I see the progress typical in some of my poems as starting with something simple and moving into something more demanding. This is certainly the pattern of weird poetry.
BILLY COLLINS

Moving Progress Simple
I hope the poem, as it goes on, gets more complicated, a little more demanding, a little more ambiguous or speculative, so that we’re drifting away from the casual beginning of the poem into something a little more serious.
BILLY COLLINS

Demanding Goes Littles On Serious
I could look at you forever and never see the two of us together
BILLY COLLINS

Forever Together Two
It seems only yesterday I used to believe there was nothing under my skin but light. If you cut me I could shine.
BILLY COLLINS

Believe Cutting Yesterday
It is as if one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the Southern Hemisphere of the brain.
BILLY COLLINS

Brain Memories Southern
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

I think my poems are slightly underrated by the word accessible.

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I think my poems are slightly underrated by the word accessible.

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