Billy Collins Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• And I should mention the light which falls through the big windows this time of day italicizing everything it touches.

  Billy Collins

  Fall, Light, Window

  Billy Collins (2013). “Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems”, p.107, Random House

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• 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

  Should Have, Progress, Attention

  "A Brisk Walk". Interview with Joel Whitney, www.guernicamag.com. June 14, 2006.

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• I stared up at the ebbing quarter moon and the stars scattered like a handful of salt across the faraway sky.

  Billy Collins

  Stars, Moon, Sky

  Billy Collins (2012). “Ballistics”, p.81, Pan Macmillan

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• 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

  Keys, Dna, Signatures

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• The trouble with poetry is that it encourages the writing of more poetry.

  Billy Collins

  Writing, Trouble, Poetry Is

  Billy Collins (2012). “The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems”, p.85, Pan Macmillan

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• I think clarity is the real risk in poetry because you are exposed. You're out in the open field. You're actually saying things that are comprehensible, and it's easy to criticize something you can understand.

  Billy Collins

  Real, Thinking, Risk

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• 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

  Mean, Ties, Rope

  Billy Collins (2014). “The Apple That Astonished Paris: Poems”, p.58, University of Arkansas Press

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• 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. I'm just writing, trying to write in a fairly quiet tone to one other reader who is by herself, or himself, and I'm trying to interrupt some silence in their life, which is utterance.

  Billy Collins

  Falling In Love, Writing, Silence

  "A Brisk Walk". Interview with Joel Whitney, www.guernicamag.com. June 14, 2006.

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• 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

  Writing, Thinking, Sitting

  "A Brisk Walk". Interview with Joel Whitney, www.guernicamag.com. June 14, 2006.

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• Bugs Bunny is my muse.

  Billy Collins

  Creativity, Bunnies, Bugs

  "Everyday moments, caught in time". "TED Talks", www.ted.com. 2012.

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• Another trouble with poetry - and I'm gonna stop the list at two - is the presence of presumptuousness in poetry, the sense you get in a poem that the poet takes for granted an interest on the reader's part in the poet's autobiographical life, in the poet's memories, problems, difficulties and even minor perceptions.

  Billy Collins

  Memories, Two, Perception

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I'm trying to write poems that involve beginning at a known place, and ending up at a slightly different place. I'm trying to take a little journey from one place to another, and it's usually from a realistic place, to a place in the imagination.

  Billy Collins

  Writing, Journey, Imagination

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• The poem is not, as someone put it, deflective of entry. But the real question is, 'What happens to the reader once he or she gets inside the poem?' That's the real question for me, is getting the reader into the poem and then taking the reader somewhere, because I think of poetry as a kind of form of travel writing.

  Billy Collins

  Real, Writing, Thinking

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• 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. 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

  Thinking, People, Way

  "A Brisk Walk". Interview with Joel Whitney, www.guernicamag.com. June 14, 2006.

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• Death is what makes life fun.

  Billy Collins

  Fun, Fun Life

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• I can hear the library humming in the night,
  a choir of authors murmuring inside their books
  along the unlit, alphabetical shelves,
  Giovanni Pontano next to Pope, Dumas next to his son,
  each one stitched into his own private coat,
  together forming a low, gigantic chord of language.

  Billy Collins

  Book, Son, Night

  Billy Collins (2011). “Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems”, p.14, Random House

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• Radio is such a perfect medium for the transmission of poetry, primarily because there just is the voice, there's no visual distraction.

  Billy Collins

  Voice, Perfect, Radio

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• By clarity I don't mean that we're always in kind of a simple area where everything is clear and comforting and understood. 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

  Mean, Simple, Comforting

  "A Brisk Walk". Interview with Joel Whitney, www.guernicamag.com. June 14, 2006.

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• High School is the place where poetry goes to die.

  Billy Collins

  School, High School, Dies

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• There are interesting forms of difficulty, and there are unprofitable forms of difficulty. I mean, I enjoy some difficult poetry, but some of it is impenetrable and I actually wouldn't want to penetrate it if I could, perhaps.

  Billy Collins

  Mean, Interesting, Want

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• There's a lot of unconscious activity that goes on I think in the composition of a poem.

  Billy Collins

  Thinking, Goes On, Unconscious

  "Poet Billy Collins discusses humor, authenticity and ‘Aimless Love’". "PBS Newshour", www.pbs.org. October 29, 2013.

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• The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

  Billy Collins

  Memories, Phones, Fishing

  2000 Taking off Emily Dickinson's Clothes: Selected Poems, 'Forgetfulness'.

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• Some difficulty is warranted and other difficulty I think is gratuitous. And I think I can tell the difference. There are certainly very difficult poets that I really enjoy reading.

  Billy Collins

  Reading, Thinking, Differences

  "A Brisk Walk". Interview with Joel Whitney, www.guernicamag.com. June 14, 2006.

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• Poems are not easy to start, and they're not easy to finish. There's a great pleasure in - I wouldn't say ease, but maybe kind of a fascinated ease that accompanies the actual writing of the poem. I find it very difficult to get started.

  Billy Collins

  Writing, Ease, Be Kind

  "A Brisk Walk". Interview with Joel Whitney, www.guernicamag.com. June 14, 2006.

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• A trouble with poetry is the presence of presumptuousness in poetry, the sense you get in a poem that the poet takes for granted an interest on the reader's part in the poet's autobiographical life, in the poet's memories, problems, difficulties and even minor perceptions. I try to presume that no one is interested in me. And I think experience bears that out. No one's interested in the experiences of a stranger - let's put it that way. And then you have difficulty combined with presumptuousness, which is the most dire trouble with poetry.

  Billy Collins

  Memories, Thinking, Perception

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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