Morning
By Billy Collins
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/audioitem/2696
Poetry > Billy Collins
Litany (a poem)
Litany
by Billy Collins
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/audioitem/140 (audio)
http://tylerpoems.blogspot.com/2010/04/litany.html
Silence (a poem)
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)
Drop a mouse into a poem
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
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.