Billy Collins: the poet of pettiness

1. Billy Collins:the poet of pettiness By: Robert annen, maggie wadley, deanna lee

2. Information • Born March 22, 1941 in New York, New York • Only child • Dad- William Collins – Electrician • Mom- Katherine Collins– Nurse • Attended parochial schools • Married Diane • Radio appearance • Lots of Catholic Schooling • Popularity boosted because publisher argument

3. Billy Collins Writing Style • Laid-back • First person • Casual • Everyday life • Distaste for Poetry in code • Contemporary poet • Poems have surprise endings • Sarcastic / Humorous • Conversational and witty poems

4. Accomplishments • Got B.A. from College of the Holy Cross in 1963 • Got Ph.D. from University of California, Riverside, 1971 • Taught at Lehman College of the City University of New York • Became an English Professor • Writer-in-residence at Sarah Lawrence College • Founder of Poetry 180 project

5. Awards • Received Poetry Fellowships from: • New York Foundation for the Arts • National Endowment for the Arts • Guggenheim Foundation • Received: • Bess Hokin Award (1990) • Ocar Blumenthal Award • Frederick Bock Prize (1992) • Levinson Prize (1995) • J. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood Prize (1999)

6. Influences • Inspired by Emily Dickinson • By mother • “The New Poetry” • John Keats • Cole Ridge • Jazz music

7. “Forgetfulness” • The name of the author is the first to go • followed obediently by the title, the plot, • the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel • which suddenly becomes one you have never read, • never even heard of, • as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor • decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, • to a little fishing village where there are no phones. • Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye • and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag, • and even now as you memorize the order of the planets, • something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps, • the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay. • Whatever it is you are struggling to remember, • it is not poised on the tip of your tongue, • not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen. • It has floated away down a dark mythological river • whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall, • well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those • who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle. • No wonder you rise in the middle of the night • to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war. • No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted • out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

8. “Taking off emilydickinson’sclothes” Later, I wrote in a notebook it was like riding a swan into the night, but, of course, I cannot tell you everything - the way she closed her eyes to the orchard, how her hair tumbled free of its pins, how there were sudden dashes whenever we spoke. What I can tell you is it was terribly quiet in Amherst that Sabbath afternoon, nothing but a carriage passing the house, a fly buzzing in a windowpane. So I could plainly hear her inhale when I undid the very top hook-and-eye fastener of her corset and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed, the way some readers sigh when they realize that Hope has feathers, that reason is a plank, that life is a loaded gun that looks right at you with a yellow eye. • First, her tippet made of tulle, • easily lifted off her shoulders and laid • on the back of a wooden chair. • And her bonnet, • the bow undone with a light forward pull. • Then the long white dress, a more • complicated matter with mother-of-pearl • buttons down the back, • so tiny and numerous that it takes forever • before my hands can part the fabric, • like a swimmer's dividing water, • and slip inside. • You will want to know • that she was standing • by an open window in an upstairs bedroom, • motionless, a little wide-eyed, • looking out at the orchard below, • the white dress puddled at her feet • on the wide-board, hardwood floor. • The complexity of women's undergarments • in nineteenth-century America • is not to be waved off, • and I proceeded like a polar explorer • through clips, clasps, and moorings, • catches, straps, and whalebone stays, • sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.

9. “The Art of drowning” • 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. • After falling off a steamship or being swept away • in a rush of floodwaters, wouldn't you hope • for a more leisurely review, an invisible hand • turning the pages of an album of photographs- • you up on a pony or blowing out candles in a conic hat. • How about a short animated film, a slide presentation? • Your life expressed in an essay, or in one model photograph? • Wouldn't any form be better than this sudden flash? • Your whole existence going off in your face • in an eyebrow-singeing explosion of biography- • nothing like the three large volumes you envisioned. • Survivors would have us believe in a brilliance • here, some bolt of truth forking across the water, • an ultimate Light before all the lights go out, • dawning on you with all its megalithic tonnage. • But if something does flash before your eyes • as you go under, it will probably be a fish, • a quick blur of curved silver darting away, • having nothing to do with your life or your death. • The tide will take you, or the lake will accept it all • as you sink toward the weedy disarray of the bottom, • leaving behind what you have already forgotten, • the surface, now overrun with the high travel of clouds.

10. critics • Considered the “most popular poet in America” – New York Times

11. Critics

12. Conclusion

13. Works cited • “Billy Collins.” Critical Survey of Poetry of American Poets. 4th ed. 2011. Print. • Collins, Billy. Ballistics. New York: Random House, 2010. Print. • - - -. “Felicitous Spaces: An interview with U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins.” Interview by Alexandra De Kamp. Terra Incognita. N.p., 2002. Web. 21 Feb. 2012. • - - -. Horoscopes for the Dead. New York: Random House, 2011. Print. • - - -. Sailing Alone Around the Room. New York: Random House, 2001. Print. • - - -. The Trouble with Poetry. New York: Random House, 2005. Print.