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

Billy Collins

And the reason I am writing this on the back of a manila envelope now that they have left the train together is to tell you that when she turned to lift the large, delicate cello onto the overhead rack.
BILLY COLLINS

Eye Left Overhead Rack Tell Together Writing
I saw him looking up at her and what she was doing the way the eyes of saints are painted when they are looking up at God when he is doing something remarkable, something that identifies him as God.
BILLY COLLINS

God Looking Remarkable Saint Something
The really authentic thing about humor is that anyone can pretend to be serious. Anyone who’s ever had a job – in fact, we’re pretending to be serious now, more or less.
BILLY COLLINS

Anymore Facts Jobs Serious
The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion,
BILLY COLLINS

Conclusion Fishing Memories Novel Phones
As soon as I start to write I’m very aware, I’m trying to be aware that a reader just might well pick up this poem, a stranger. So when I’m writing – and I think that this is important for all writers – I’m trying to be a writer and a reader back and forth.
BILLY COLLINS

Aware Stranger Thinking Trying Two Writing
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 Thinking Writing
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 Home Rain Song Tell
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
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 Thinking Writing
There’s a lot of unconscious activity that goes on I think in the composition of a poem.
BILLY COLLINS

Goes On Thinking Unconscious
I knew that poets seemed to be miserable.
BILLY COLLINS

Miserable Poet Seemed
To write poetry is to be very alone, but you always have the company of your influences. But you also have the company of the form itself, which has a kind of consciousness.
BILLY COLLINS

Consciousness Lines Mean Writing
Clarity is certainly a way toward disorientation because if you don’t start out – if the reader isn’t grounded, if the reader is disoriented in the beginning of the poem, then the reader can’t be led astray or disoriented later.
BILLY COLLINS

Astray Beginning Clarity Disorientated Poem Reader
This love for everyday things, part natural from the wide eye of Infancy, part a literary calculation
BILLY COLLINS

Day Every Eye Natural Things
In the process of simplifying oneself, one often discovers the thing called voice.
BILLY COLLINS

Oneself Process Voice
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
A motto I’ve adopted is, if at first you don’t succeed, hide all evidence that you ever tried.
BILLY COLLINS

Firsts Motto Succeed
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.
BILLY COLLINS

Mean Names Wall
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
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
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
Nationalism is a type of insanity in which the boundaries of a land replace God.
BILLY COLLINS

Boundaries Insanity Land
All they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with a rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.
BILLY COLLINS

Beating Mean Rope Tie Ties
The mind can be trained to relieve itself on paper.
BILLY COLLINS

Mind Paper Relieve Trained
I’m speaking to someone I’m trying to get to fall in love with me. I’m trying to speak intimately to one person. That should be clear. I’m not speaking to an audience. I’m not writing for the podium.
BILLY COLLINS

Falling Love Podium Silence Writing
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 find it strange that – at least in my take on it – the people who are the most alarmed about the dire times we live in are the ones who seem to be humorless, in their taste for poetry anyway.
BILLY COLLINS

Alarmed Humorless People Thinking Way

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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