Jack DoyleErin Morris Brad Fortunato

BILLY COLLINS

“The Most Popular Poet in America”

Background

Born- New York City on March 22, 1941

Son of William and Katherine William- electrician Katherine- nurse

Background

college of Holy Cross university of California Awarded

Background

normal life as a professor at Lehman university of the City University of New York.

Appointed as poet laureate

influences

Suburban, middle class other poets Others poems The New Poetry book nature

influences-other poets

Memorizing “The Sun Rising” by John DonneBY BILLY COLLINS Every reader loves the way he tells off the sun, shouting busy old fool into the English skies even though they were likely cloudy on that seventeenth-century morning.

And it’s a pleasure to spend this sunny day

But after a few steps into stanza number two,wherein the sun is blinded by his mistress’s eyes, I can feel the first one begin

to fade like sky-written letters on a windy day.

And by the time I have taken in the third, the second is likewise gone, a blown-out candle now,a wavering line of acrid smoke.

So it’s not until I leave the houseand walk three times around this hidden lakethat the poem begins to showany interest in walking by my side.

Then, after my circling,

better than the courteous dominion of her being all states and him all princes,

better than love’s power to shrinkthe wide world to the size of a bedchamber,

and better even than the compressionof all that into the rooms of these three stanzasis how, after hours stepping up and down the poem,testing the plank of every line,it goes with me now, contracted into a little spot within.

influences

his life isn’t very exciting. poems as an escape. uses humor, transport himself Aristotle

influences

Everyday life No TimeBy Billy CollinsIn a rush this weekday morning, I tap the horn as I speed past the cemetery where my parents are buried side by side beneath a slab of smooth granite.

Then, all day, I think of him rising up to give me that look of knowing disapproval while my mother calmly tells him to lie back down.

Poem- suburbs and nature influence him

HerBY BILLY COLLINS “There is no noisier place than the suburbs, someone once said to me as we were walking along a fairway, and every day is delighted to offer fresh evidence: the chainsaw, the leaf-blower blowing one leaf around an enormous house with columns, on Mondays and Thursdays the garbage truck equipped with air brakes, reverse beeper, and merciless grinder. “

CANADABY BILLY COLLINS “I am writing this on a strip of white birch

bark that I cut from a tree with a penknife. There is no other way to express

adequately the immensity of the clouds that are

passing over the farms   and wooded lakes of Ontario and the

endless visibility   that hands you the horizon on a platter.  I am also writing this in a wooden canoe, a point of balance in the middle of Lake

Couchiching,   resting the birch bark against my

knees.   I can feel the sun’s hands on my bare

back,   but I am thinking of winter”

Literary Criticism-Positive “uses humor to lead the reader into

the place, often a serious and surprising place”

“Collins often uses an abstract title which he subsequently explores in a variety of concrete images”

John Taylor Says “His humor often seems simply a means, a invitation to serious reflection”

“some examples of playful imagination”

Literary Criticism-negative “seems to have been written in code” “Collins technique produces poems that

evoke no emotional response from the reader”

“He makes readers believe that the only way to approach a poem is to ‘tie it to a chair with a rope and torture a confession out of it’”

“We seem to always know where we are in a Billy Collins poem, but not where he is going”

Thank You for listening

Billy Collins has made and continues to make numerous contributions to modern poetry