Poetry > Billy Collins

Morning (a poem)

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Morning
By Billy Collins
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/audioitem/2696

Why do we bother with the rest of the day,
the swale of the afternoon,
the sudden dip into evening,
then night with his notorious perfumes,
his many-pointed stars?
This is the best—
throwing off the light covers,
feet on the cold floor,
and buzzing around the house on espresso—
maybe a splash of water on the face,
a palmful of vitamins—
but mostly buzzing around the house on espresso,
dictionary and atlas open on the rug,
the typewriter waiting for the key of the head,
a cello on the radio,
and, if necessary, the windows—
trees fifty, a hundred years old
out there,
heavy clouds on the way
and the lawn steaming like a horse
in the early morning.
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Aristotle

Silence (a poem)

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Silence
by Billy Collins
http://www.npr.org/2012/06/01/153699514/when-does-creativity-start-and-end (audio)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/39 (text)

There is the sudden silence of the crowd
above a player not moving on the field,
and the silence of the orchid.
The silence of the falling vase
before it strikes the floor,
the silence of the belt when it is not striking the child.
The stillness of the cup and the water in it,
the silence of the moon
and the quiet of the day far from the roar of the sun.
The silence when I hold you to my chest,
the silence of the window above us,
and the silence when you rise and turn away.
And there is the silence of this morning
which I have broken with my pen,
a silence that had piled up all night
like snow falling in the darkness of the house—
the silence before I wrote a word
and the poorer silence now.
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Drop a mouse into a poem

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Introduction to Poetry
Billy Collins
http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/001.html
read at: http://www.npr.org/2012/06/01/153699514/when-does-creativity-start-and-end

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

from The Apple that Astonished Paris, 1996
University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, Ark.

Bugs Bunny is my muse

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When Does Creativity Start And End?  
May 25, 2012
http://www.npr.org/2012/06/01/153699514/when-does-creativity-start-and-end

Preferring lyrical simplicity to abstruse intellectualism, Collins combines humility and depth of perception, undercutting light and digestible topics with dark and sometimes biting humor.

In 2001 Collins was named U.S. poet laureate, a title he kept until 2003.
Collins lives in Somers, NY, and is an English professor at City University of New York

[Collins] I’m a total cartoon junkie since childhood.
I think more influential than Emily Dickenson or Coleridge or Wordsworth on my imagination, were Warner Bros., Merry Melodies and Loony Tunes cartoons.
Bugs Bunny is my muse.

About Tiffany Adams
Tiffany Adams, the young poet at the beginning of this piece, is a student at Ballou Senior High School in Washington, DC. She gave her reading at 826DC, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center. The organization published a poetry collection containing work by Adams and other students from the center.