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Billy Collins essays on poems
Billy Collins essays on poems
Introduction to poetry by collins analysis
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Bill Collins is a very well-known and popular poet. He has written over fifty poems in his career. He was born in New York and later became a professor at a university in New York and other universities. While reading our text, Literature to Go, I found the explanations which the poet provided after the poems to be very fascinating. They provided great insight and perspective on the poets thoughts, the poems meaning and the writing process of his poems
I enjoyed reading one of Collins 2005 poems entitled, Building with Its Face Blown Off. This poem is incredibly descriptive. Collins writes about a bombed out city and a building that has been extensively damaged. The building is described in detail which enables the reader to envision the
“Dubbed ‘the most popular poet in America’ by Bruce Weber in the New York Times, Billy Collins is famous for conversational, witty poems that welcome readers with humor but often slip into quirky, tender or profound observation on the everyday, reading and writing, and poetry itself” (“Billy Collins”).“Billy Collins was the American Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003” (534). His work was highly recognized due to his use of literary elements and his high intellect in the field of poetry. Collins constantly receives praise from others. For example John Updike has been quoted praising his poems saying, “lovely poems...limpid, gently and consistently
A storm such as Katrina undoubtedly ruined homes and lives with its destructive path. Chris Rose touches upon these instances of brokenness to elicit sympathy from his audience. Throughout the novel, mental illness rears its ugly head. Tales such as “Despair” reveal heart-wrenching stories emerging from a cycle of loss. This particular article is concerned with the pull of New Orleans, its whisper in your ear when you’ve departed that drags you home. Not home as a house, because everything physical associated with home has been swept away by the storm and is now gone. Rather, it is concerned with home as a feeling, that concept that there is none other than New Orleans. Even when there is nothing reminiscent of what you once knew, a true New Orleanian will seek a fresh start atop the foundation of rubbish. This is a foreign concept for those not native to New Orleans, and a New Orleanian girl married to a man from Atlanta found her relationship split as a result of flooding waters. She was adamant about staying, and he returned to where he was from. When he came back to New Orleans for her to try and make it work, they shared grim feelings and alcohol, the result of which was the emergence of a pact reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet. This couple decided they would kill themselves because they could see no light amongst the garbage and rot, and failure was draining them of any sense of optimism. She realized the fault in this agreement,
Mason, Jr., Julian D. The Poems of Phillis Wheatley. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1989.
The popular American Poet, Billy Collins, is playing a significant role in the evolution of poetry. His writing style evokes an array of emotions for the reader. Every stanza in his poetry passes the satirical standard that he generated for himself over his career. Collins swiftly captivates his readers through his diverse use of figurative language. More specifically, his use of vivid imagery paired with humorous personification and extended metaphors create his unique style of satirical poetry. This developed form of writing appeals to a large crowd of people because the generally accessible topics that he discusses are fairly easy to resonate for the common man. However, his poetry offers an interesting perspective on what otherwise would be simplistic ideas. The main themes and concepts that are being presented in each of his writings are revered and coveted by the general population. An appealing aspect of his writing is his ability to directly convey the main idea within the poem. As a result, the reader can understand the meaning of his work with ease. The typical beginning of his work gives the reader a slight taste of what is to come. Billy Collins’ unique writing style and various trademarks directly influenced by his ability to propagate an array of emotions for the reader, his humorous tone, and the accessibility of the topics he describes within his poetry.
Collins has been able to put together high critical acclaim with such broad popular appeal which is something no poet has done since Robert Frost. His last three collections of poems broke sales records for poetry. His audiences include people of all ages and backgrounds.
For this assignment, I have decided to write about a famous poem of Billy Collins which is titled as ‘Introduction to Poetry’ written in 1996.
After seeing the film, Dead Poets Society, the watcher will easily pick up on Transcendental idea’s whether they know it or not. If the viewer is watching this movie for educational purposes or entertainment, it overall demonstrates to the audience many strong ideas that these common writers emphasizes greatly throughout their writing through Mr. Keatings methods of teaching. Lesson’s of three common Transcendental writers, Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman are taught both directly and subtly by the influential teacher, Mr. Keating. The lessons taught not only impact the boys during the film, but it changes their mindset for the rest of their lives and the audiences. Keating was prosperous in establishing the theories of the writers inside the boys minds which impacted all aspects of their lives for the better.
As England’s Poet Laureate, and recipient of both the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry and T.S. Eliot’s prize for poetry, Ted Hughes was an acclaimed poet. The shadow of Hughes late wife, Sylvia Plath, kept Hughes stagnant in his career, in which he was known as “Her Husband” (Middlebrook). Hughes most recent collection of poems, Birthday Letters, took him over twenty-five years to write, and contains poems which recount the marriage of the couple. Hughes wrote the poems as a loving gesture towards Sylvia, but the poems were misinterpreted as “an attempt to adjust the public record in the wake of her confession and the mass of commentary which has grown up around them” (Spurr 3). Hughes incorporated into his poetry the ideals of postmodernism, his somber life and relationships, simplistic formatting, imagery, and allusions. Hughes influenced the world through his animal images and multifarious tones.
“This Is Just To Say” by William Carlos Williams is a twenty-eight-word poem that expresses author’s true thought and feeling about the actual eating of the plums. The simplicity of the poem gives readers a false impression that the poem somehow is related to the Bible story, because those words, such as “the plums”, “Forgive me” and “So sweet and so cold”, forces the readers to make a stronger association with the story of Adam and Eve falling from the Garden of Eden, the readers have always seeking for a deeper meaning in the poem, rather than simply enjoy the poem from reading. Traditionally, in order to call a set of words a poetry, the poem must have some potential meanings and metaphors other than its surface meaning of the words, but “This Is Just To Say” by William overturns those poetry’s rule, restriction, and rhyme scheme, and argues that a simple poem can be written to celebrate a true feeling of a simple joy of everyday life.
Phillis Wheatley’s background was not always the most conventional. She was an enslaved African American whose first language was not English, but despite that she still became a poet at an early age. Although, Wheatley did not have the best education she still became a famous role model and poet. In her early 20’s, she did have some positive experiences by meeting Benjamin Franklin and two European aristocrats who soon became her role models in life. These role models helped
The brevity of the poem is important because Collins is effectively giving the reader the parts of a divorce that he feels are most relevant. He is cutting out all the other moments that lead a couple to divorce such as the bickering and the loss of love over time. Instead, Collins is discussing the end result of the change that happens in a relationship, he is showing the contrast of the two extreme places. His constant use of juxtaposing images throughout the poem show that there is a clear love loss by the time these two people start their relationship, never believing that they could end arguing over the bitter details of splitting their
The inventive imagery within Plath’s poetry allows the reader an insight into her frame of mind, and though she could be seen as a confessional poet through the specific details that she includes from her own life, we do see how she has manipulated these events and characters within her poems to realise the outcome she desires, as seen in ‘Lady Lazarus’. But even when she is not directly referring to a personal detail, the reader is still able to interpret the speaker’s emotions within poems, and in many instances correlate them to Plath’s own feelings. Despite this, it is difficult to separate Plath’s poetry from the circumstances of her tragic death, and thus the reader imprints their own idea of how Plath might have felt whilst writing her later poetry. This also applies to Hughes, after Plath’s suicide, when his poetry became raw and macabre with the birth of ‘Crow’, and though Hughes is not deemed a biographical poet in the way that Plath is, his poetry does portray his emotions just as strongly as Plath’s does. He too uses imagery and form to capture the grim violence within the collection. The reader can deduce the fragile emotional state that Hughes had to endure through a difficult period of his life through the character of ‘Crow’ within his poems. When reading the poetry that Plath produced just prior
---. Modern Poems. Richard Ellman and Robert O'Clair Ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1989.
Griffin, Alice. "Understanding Tennessee Williams". University of South Carolina Press; Reprint edition. February 28, 2011.
How can one’s life’s work turn into poetry? One can assume that poetry is only cause from despair. William Butler Yeats’s poetry says otherwise. Yeats uses the strength from his long and dedicated background into poetry. From the time spent as a young boy, seeing different religious views from his family motivated him to excel as a poet entering manhood. Being acknowledged as one of the best English-language poets of the 20th century, William Butler Yeats’s plays, notable poetry, and changes in art made him successful.