Billy Collins is an American poet who served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He has often been referred to as the “most popular poet in America.” His poems are famously witty and often include surprising twists and turns. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2016. Read more about Billy Collins.
In ‘The History Teacher,’ the titular educator neglects to teach his students about the cold, hard realities of the past in order to protect their innocence from reality.
Trying to protect his students' innocence
he told them the Ice Age was really just
the Chilly Age, a period of a million years
when everyone had to wear sweaters.
In ‘Aimless Love,” the speaker finds himself falling love with the precarious beauty of everyday life.
This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.
‘My Number’ by Billy Collins takes a jocular approach to wrangling with the existential anxieties brought on when thinking about death.
Is Death miles away from this house,
reaching for a widow in Cincinnati
or breathing down the neck of a lost hiker
in British Columbia?
‘Afternoon with Irish Cows’ describes one speaker’s presumptions about the interior lives of cows and the power that sound has over human understanding.
‘Introduction to Poetry’ by Billy Collins is a beautiful poem that speaks about the nature of poetry. The poet considers how poetry should be appreciated and comprehended.
‘Man Listening to Disc’ is a poem written by “the most popular poet in America”, Billy Collins. This poem presents the poet’s feelings while listening to jazz music.
I wonder how it all got started, this business
about seeing your life flash before your eyes
while you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence,
could startle time into such compression, crushing
decades in the vice of your desperate, final seconds.
There are many that I miss
having sent my last one out a car window
sparking along the road one night, years ago.
‘The Dead’ eliminates the gap between the living and the poor. It draws our attention to the fact that the dead are always watching us and waiting for our arrival.
In the poem, ‘The Revenant’, Billy Collins channels the spirit of a deceased dog and subverts the accepted relationship of man and his best friend.
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