Billy Collins Quotes

In the long revolt against inherited forms that has by now become the narrative of 20th-century poetry in English, no poet was more flamboyant or more recognizable in his iconoclasm than Cummings.

The girl who signed her papers in lipstick

Radio is such a perfect medium for the transmission of poetry, primarily because there just is the voice, there's no visual distraction.

I'm all for poetry catching up with technology, and just as there are iTunes, I think we should have iPoems. I mean, people should be able to walk around with their earbuds in and listening to poems o...

Poetry is my cheap means of transportation. By the end of the poem the reader should be in a different place from where he started. I would like him to be slightly disoriented at the end, like I drove...

I don't think anybody reads a book of poetry front to back. Editors and reviewers only. I don't think anybody else does.

And the reason I am writing thison the back of a manila envelopenow that they have left the train togetheris to tell you that when she turnedto lift the large, delicate celloonto the overhead rack,I s...

Often people, when they're confronted with a poem, it's like someone who keep saying 'what is the meaning of this? What is the meaning of this?' And that dulls us to the other pleasures poetry offers.

تجوس الريح البيت كشبح في هذه الليلةو بينما أتلكأ على باب النومأفكّر بأول شخص رأى حلماً،وكم لا بدّ كان بالغ الهدوء في الصباح التاليبينما وقف الآخرون حول النارمتدثرين بجلود الحيوانات،متكلمين إلى بعضهم ب...

The birds are in their trees,the toast is in the toaster,and the poets are at their windows.[...]The proofreaders are playing the ping-ponggame of proofreading,glancing back and forth from page to pag...

Dancing Towards BethlehemIf there is only enough time in the finalminutes of the 20th century for one last danceI would like to be dancing it slowly with you,say, in the ballroom of a seaside hotel.My...

There are interesting forms of difficulty, and there are unprofitable forms of difficulty. I mean, I enjoy some difficult poetry, but some of it is impenetrable and I actually wouldn't want to penetra...

I'm trying to write poems that involve beginning at a known place, and ending up at a slightly different place. I'm trying to take a little journey from one place to another, and it's usually from a r...

One of the disadvantages of poetry over popular music is that if you write a pop song, it naturally gets into people's heads as they listen in the car. You don't have to memorize a Paul Simon song; it...

And the past and the future? Nothing but an only child with two different masks.

People think of poetry as a school subject... Poetry is very frustrating to students because they don't have a taste for ambiguity, for one thing. That gives them a poetry hangover.

You know the parlor trick.wrap your arms around your own bodyand from the back it looks likesomeone is embracing youher hands grasping your shirther fingernails teasing your neckfrom the front it is a...

And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air

For most Americans, poetry plays no role in their everyday lives. But also for most Americans, contemporary painting or jazz or sculpture play no role either. I'm not saying poetry is singled out as a...

If an artist is driven primarily by social responsibility, I think the art probably suffers because, again, just as leadership has a rather defined end point or purpose, social responsibility would se...