Billy Collins Billy Collins was born on March 22, 1941 in New York, NY and is married to Diane Collins. He is the son of Katherine M. Collins and William S. Collins. Collins received a Bachelors Degree at the College of the Holy Cross in 1963 and also received a Ph.D. in romantic poetry in 1971. He has been a writer-in-residence at Sarah Lawrence College and also was a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library. He is an English Professor at Lehman College for CUNY, where he has been teaching
Billy Collins: the Poet of Continuity and Change From controversial events to ordinary life stories, Billy Collins writes about various topics in different perspectives just like a chameleon, changing its colors to fit with its surrounding. Collins talks in a gentle, yet humorous way; he illustrates a profound understanding through a clear observation. His writing style blends humor and solemnity in one entity. Throughout his poetry, Collins demonstrates, in a witty and satirical voice, his insightfulness
The Poetry of Billy Collins In 2001 a new poet laureate was crowned and a new voice; the voice of a poetic everyman was heard by many for the first time. That voice belonged to Billy Collins. Collins was born into a working-class Bronx couple, and grew up in a typical middle-class neighborhood where he went to church on Sundays and listened to jazz music in his free time. This middle-class background and sensibilities are reflected in his poetic style and themes, and in his desire to bring
Billy Collins accessibility in “Questions about Angels,” proves that it allows the reader to relate to the poem. Billy Collins work proves this with the language used in his work, the satire, and how he expands the topic in his poetry. Billy Collins uses certain languages in his poetry to allow all readers to relate to his poetry. Collins uses multiple forms of language in his writing. From simple language to any universal language in his writing. In Billy Collins “Questions about Angels,” he writes
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
the poems “Introductory to Poetry” by Billy Collins and “Ars Poetica” by Archibald Macleish, both authors address the topic of language and communication, but also different ways to experience art, such as poetry. While Archibald Macleish uses tone and imagery to create an other-worldly experience as a way to describe the pleasure gained from reading poetry, Billy Collins uses a more direct and concise path to explain his message to the audience. Both Collins and Macleish emphasize the importance
In the poem “The Names”, Billy Collins elaborates names throughout the night. Collins is illustrating people that died in the tragedy of September 11, 2001. This poem is complex, which is illustrated through personification, allusion, and imagery. Collins use of personification is giving the night a human feature, to show complexity. The complexity of this poem is started off with, “palm of the night,” (1294). This quote shows that it’s the middle of the night, but it’s more complex due to the deeper
The title of a poem sets a path for the context to follow, it creates expectations for the reader and usually foreshadows particular events likely to come. Billy Collins’ Marginalia is no different, in that it exposes the reader to what the rest of the poem has to offer. The term marginalia is defined as marginal notes or notes in the margin of a book, manuscript, or letter. The word Marginalia is traced back to the Latin forms margin- and margo, meaning "margin." Just by the title alone, the readers
The Billy Collins, in the poem “Introduction to Poetry” renowned professor and writer, explains the teaching poetry’s act. He lists the several methods he would resemble his students to think about poetry. “I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide.” (line 1-3) In this 1st stanza of the introduction to poetry’s central view is established. We have a chatterer. In this example, we can take up that the narrator is Collins himself. It is clear that when Collins says “I
Rough Draft We have all had those memorable moments that send us back in time; a song on the radio, the smell of cookies baking, driving in the car. They make you think of good times passed. But Billy Collins’s poem, “The Lanyard”, is not only a recollection of the past, but a personal insight to about the things his mother has done for him and what he has done in return. The poem starts off with the speaker recounting an event that occurred the other day. We see him moving about a blue-walled
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
things that keep us going, help us learn, and retain our best and worst experiences; or, they can be essentially useless. In “On Turning Ten”, by Billy Collins, the readers can learn and be reminded of the plethora of emotions and painful truths they experienced themselves when entering the double digits. By writing from a child’s perspective, Billy Collins is effectively able to disclose and describe the complexities a child goes through when turning ten. The overall tone of this poem has been consistently
An Introduction to a Poet: Billy Collins Billy Collins is one of the most credited poets of this century and last. He is a man of many talents, most recognized though by his provocative and riveting poetry. As John McEnroe was to the sport of tennis, Billy Collins has done the same for the world of poetry. Collin’s rejected the old ways of poetry, created his own form, broke all the rules, and still retains the love and respect of the poet community. Collins has received the title of Poet Laureate
Billy Collins, the writer of Sonnet uses a comical effect to make fun of old sonnets, how they were written and the older poets, through the use of literary terms.The fact that Billy Collins speaks with a mockery tone of Petrarch, causes readers to understand how he feels about the old sonnet writers and their work. Collins' tone expresses a negative look on old sonnets but also looks on the bright side of them. He is addressing the issue of how older sonnets were written by old poets in order to
Collins uses imagery to depict an image within the readers minds in order to get them emotionally attached to this piece of work. Collin starts off in the first stanza describing the night like a peaceful breeze. He then calmly observes the raindrops dripping slow down his windows until they disappear in “a soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze” (2-3). He then saw this silver glaze on the windows and at this moment he started naming the last names of victims from the 9/11 events. As the list
Analysis for “Introduction to Poetry” “Introduction to Poetry” is a beautiful poem that Billy Collins wrote to tell readers how to appreciate poetry in the proper method. Many readers maybe confuse by the first impression of the magnificent vocabularies or hard to find the meaning. Therefore, after reading it carefully, it’s easy to find out the thesis. Billy Collins is an affection poet who made a big contribution in the poetry development field in modern American. Indeed, as a thoughtful poet,
“The Lanyard”, by Billy Collins is a poem about the love of a mother and the love of a child. The main character, presently an adult male, speaks of his mother and his childhood memories of her. The focal memory of the character is a lanyard he made for his mother. Collins explains how the boy's simple gift, the lanyard, which symbolizes love, was enough to recompense her service of motherhood at a young age and presently how his words are enough compensation for her lifelong unconditional love.
In “Sonnet,” Billy Collins satirizes the classical sonnet’s volume to illustrate love in only “…fourteen lines…” (1). Collins’s poem subsists as a “Sonnet,” though there exists many differences in it countering the customarily conventional structure of a sonnet. Like Collins’s “Sonnet,” Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 130” also faces incongruities from the classic sonnet form as he satirizes the concept of ideal beauty that was largely a convention of writings and art during the Elizabethan era. Although these
Billy Collins is a famous American poet who uses everyday language to appeal to his audience. Collins is a true wordsmith who can pack a lot of meaning into only a few short sentences; his poem Divorce does exactly that. Divorce is a short poem consisting of only 18 words and two stanzas composed of two lines each. Collins ability to concentrate so much meaning into such a short poem shows his mastery of metaphors. The brevity of the poem is important because Collins is effectively giving the reader
passed on before you? If so then understand that you aren’t alone in pondering about this matter. In fact, this subject matter is explored in the two poems, “The Dead” By Billy Collins and W.S. Merwin’s “For The Anniversary of My Death”. The similarities in these two pieces of poetry tie into their gloomy and mournful tone. Collins and Merwin both use simile to emphasize familiar thoughts that have shifted their minds on the topic of death. Along with that, the literary device of sentence structure