---
title: "77 Poetry Quotes By Billy Collins"
description: "Poetry quotes by Billy Collins discuss clarity, humor, and the act of writing."
image: "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b3d/billy-collins-3004_accessible_i-think-my-poems-are-slightly-underrated_2675163.png"
---

> [I think my poems are slightly underrated by the word accessible.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/i-think-my-poems-are-slightly-underrated-by-the-word-accessible/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b3d/billy-collins-3004_accessible_i-think-my-poems-are-slightly-underrated_2675163.png)

> [Write the poem only you can write.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/write-the-poem-only-you-can-write/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d88/billy-collins-3004_funny_write-the-poem-only-you-can-write-242000_2420001.png)

> [I see woefully obscure poetry as simply a kind of verbal rudeness.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/i-see-woefully-obscure-poetry-as-simply-a-kind-of-verbal-rudeness/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d01/billy-collins-3004_kind_i-see-woefully-obscure-poetry-as-simply_1899681.png)

> [I knew that poets seemed to be miserable.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/i-knew-that-poets-seemed-to-be-miserable/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/c8e/billy-collins-3004_knew_i-knew-that-poets-seemed-to-be-miserable_2787419.png)

> [High School is the place where poetry goes to die.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/high-school-is-the-place-where-poetry-goes-to-die/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/ead/billy-collins-3004_high-school_high-school-is-the-place-where-poetry-go_799998.png)

> [I think the pleasure of form is that you have a companion with you besides all the poetry you have ever read.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/i-think-the-pleasure-of-form-is-that-you-have-a-companion-with-you/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/393/billy-collins-3004_companion_i-think-the-pleasure-of-form-is-that-you_2001370.png)

> [It's a good thing to get poetry off the shelves and more into public life.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/it-s-a-good-thing-to-get-poetry-off-the-shelves-and-more-into-public/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/61e/billy-collins-3004_good-thing_it-s-a-good-thing-to-get-poetry-off-the_2395964.png)

> [While the novelist is banging on his typewriter, the poet is watching a fly in the windowpane.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/while-the-novelist-is-banging-on-his-typewriter-the-poet-is-watching/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d01/billy-collins-3004_banging_while-the-novelist-is-banging-on-his-typ_577110.png)

> [Until recently, I thought 'occasional poetry' meant that you wrote only occasionally.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/until-recently-i-thought-occasional-poetry-meant-that-you-wrote-only/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/46b/billy-collins-3004_occasional_until-recently-i-thought-occasional-poet_1271260.png)

> [I was able to read poets that were - allowed me to be humorous without being silly.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/i-was-able-to-read-poets-that-were-allowed-me-to-be-humorous-without/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/e5c/billy-collins-3004_able_i-was-able-to-read-poets-that-were-allow_566888.png)

> [I thought originally when I was in school and I wanted to be a poet, I knew that poets seemed to be…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/i-thought-originally-when-i-was-in-school-and-i-wanted-to-be-a-poet-i/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/418/billy-collins-3004_miserable_i-thought-originally-when-i-was-in-schoo_1192237.png)

> [Poetry is like standing on the edge of a lake on a moonlit night and the light of the moon is always…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/poetry-is-like-standing-on-the-edge-of-a-lake-on-a-moonlit-night-and/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/40e/billy-collins-3004_edges_poetry-is-like-standing-on-the-edge-of-a_768021.png)

> [...pleasure, of course, is a slippery word… Our pleasures ultimately belong to us, not to the pleasure's so](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/pleasure-of-course-is-a-slippery-word-our-pleasures-ultimately-belong/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/a9a/billy-collins-3004_happiness_pleasure-of-course-is-a-slippery-word-ou_39808.png)

> [More often than not in poetry I find difficulty to be gratuitous and show-offy and camouflaging, experimental to a kind of insane…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/more-often-than-not-in-poetry-i-find-difficulty-to-be-gratuitous-and/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/467/billy-collins-3004_books_more-often-than-not-in-poetry-i-find-dif_1025789.png)

> [The literary world is so full of pretension, and there's such an enormous gap between how seriously poets take themselves and how…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/the-literary-world-is-so-full-of-pretension-and-there-s-such-an/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/72e/billy-collins-3004_enormous_the-literary-world-is-so-full-of-pretens_1824106.jpg)

> [When I'm constructing a poem, I'm trying to write one good line after another. One solid line after another. You know a…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/when-i-m-constructing-a-poem-i-m-trying-to-write-one-good-line-after/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/997/billy-collins-3004_chopping_when-i-m-constructing-a-poem-i-m-trying_2368436.png)

> [Often people, when they're confronted with a poem, it's like someone who keep saying 'what is the meaning of this? What is…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/often-people-when-they-re-confronted-with-a-poem-it-s-like-someone/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/5ba/billy-collins-3004_offers_often-people-when-they-re-confronted-wit_2800487.jpg)

> [There are interesting forms of difficulty, and there are unprofitable forms of difficulty. I mean, I enjoy some difficult poetry, but some…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/there-are-interesting-forms-of-difficulty-and-there-are-unprofitable/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/96c/billy-collins-3004_adversity_there-are-interesting-forms-of-difficult_1249098.png)

> [When I began to dare to be clear, because I think clarity is the real risk in poetry because you are exposed.…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/when-i-began-to-dare-to-be-clear-because-i-think-clarity-is-the-real/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/29d/billy-collins-3004_clarity_when-i-began-to-dare-to-be-clear-because_2783841.png)

> [Listeners are kind of ambushed... if a poem just happens to be said when they're listening to the radio. The listener doesn't…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/listeners-are-kind-of-ambushed-if-a-poem-just-happens-to-be-said-when/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/195/billy-collins-3004_happens_listeners-are-kind-of-ambushed-if-a-poem_392056.jpg)

> [“all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/all-they-want-to-do-is-tie-the-poem-to-a-chair-with-rope-and-torture/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/289/billy-collins-3004_chairs_all-they-want-to-do-is-tie-the-poem-to-a_2732352.png)

> [Part of writing is discovering the rules of the game and then deciding whether to follow the rules or to break them.…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/part-of-writing-is-discovering-the-rules-of-the-game-and-then/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/915/billy-collins-3004_break_part-of-writing-is-discovering-the-rules_812173.png)

> [I think my work has to do with a sense that we are attempting, all the time, to create a logical, rational…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/i-think-my-work-has-to-do-with-a-sense-that-we-are-attempting-all-the/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/e1a/billy-collins-3004_attempting_i-think-my-work-has-to-do-with-a-sense-t_1822174.png)

> [I always think W.S. Merwin's poems will last of anyone writing today. If I had to bet on posterity I would bet…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/i-always-think-w-s-merwin-s-poems-will-last-of-anyone-writing-today/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/ac4/billy-collins-3004_finding-yourself_i-always-think-w-s-merwin-s-poems-will-l_1390023.png)

> [I started moving away from poets like Wallace Stevens and Hart Crane and started reading poets like, again, Karl Shapiro, Howard Nemerov,…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/i-started-moving-away-from-poets-like-wallace-stevens-and-hart-crane/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/1de/billy-collins-3004_anthology_i-started-moving-away-from-poets-like-wa_2379689.jpg)

> [Another trouble with poetry - and I'm gonna stop the list at two - is the presence of presumptuousness in poetry, the…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/another-trouble-with-poetry-and-i-m-gonna-stop-the-list-at-two-is-the/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/4d7/billy-collins-3004_books_another-trouble-with-poetry-and-i-m-gonn_2027363.png)

> [The poem is not, as someone put it, deflective of entry. But the real question is, 'What happens to the reader once…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/the-poem-is-not-as-someone-put-it-deflective-of-entry-but-the-real/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/651/billy-collins-3004_books_the-poem-is-not-as-someone-put-it-deflec_684799.png)

> [As soon as I start to write I'm very aware, I'm trying to be aware that a reader just might well pick…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/as-soon-as-i-start-to-write-i-m-very-aware-i-m-trying-to-be-aware/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/980/billy-collins-3004_back-and-forth_as-soon-as-i-start-to-write-i-m-very-awa_1488745.png)

> [To write poetry is to be very alone, but you always have the company of your influences. But you also have the…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/to-write-poetry-is-to-be-very-alone-but-you-always-have-the-company/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/ee6/billy-collins-3004_business_to-write-poetry-is-to-be-very-alone-but_552985.png)

> [“ Picnic, Lightning It is possible to be struck by a meteor or a single-engine plane while reading in a chair at…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/picnic-lightning-it-is-possible-to-be-struck-by-a-meteor-or-a-single/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/c87/billy-collins-3004_death_picnic-lightning-it-is-possible-to-be-st_1034739.jpg)

> [“ Marginalia Sometimes the notes are ferocious, skirmishes against the author raging along the borders of every page in tiny black script.…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/marginalia-sometimes-the-notes-are-ferocious-skirmishes-against-the/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/5c0/billy-collins-3004_books_marginalia-sometimes-the-notes-are-feroc_2600496.jpg)

> [“Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes" First, her tippet made of tulle, easily lifted off her shoulders and laid on the back of…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/taking-off-emily-dickinson-s-clothes-first-her-tippet-made-of-tulle/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/444/billy-collins-3004_emily-dickinson_taking-off-emily-dickinson-s-clothes-fir_520270.jpg)

> [“ Japan Today I pass the time reading a favorite haiku, saying the few words over and over. It feels like eating…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/japan-today-i-pass-the-time-reading-a-favorite-haiku-saying-the-few/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/0db/billy-collins-3004_haiku_japan-today-i-pass-the-time-reading-a-fa_2449960.png)

> [“The History Teacher Trying to protect his students' innocence he told them the Ice Age was really just the Chilly Age, a…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/the-history-teacher-trying-to-protect-his-students-innocence-he-told/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/ab1/billy-collins-3004_history_the-history-teacher-trying-to-protect-hi_3210429.png)

> [A trouble with poetry is the presence of presumptuousness in poetry, the sense you get in a poem that the poet takes…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/a-trouble-with-poetry-is-the-presence-of-presumptuousness-in-poetry/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/e62/billy-collins-3004_bears_a-trouble-with-poetry-is-the-presence-of_121205.png)

> [There's this pet phrase about writing that is bandied around particularly in workshops about "finding your own voice as a poet", which…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/there-s-this-pet-phrase-about-writing-that-is-bandied-around/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/8e9/billy-collins-3004_able_there-s-this-pet-phrase-about-writing-th_865725.jpg)

> [Form is any aspect of a poem that encourages it to stay whole and not drift off into chaos.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/form-is-any-aspect-of-a-poem-that-encourages-it-to-stay-whole-and-not/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/a33/billy-collins-3004_aspect_form-is-any-aspect-of-a-poem-that-encour_1952885.png)

> [I was a pretty happy kid, I had to fake it. I had to get into this miserable character before I wrote…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/i-was-a-pretty-happy-kid-i-had-to-fake-it-i-had-to-get-into-this/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/cab/billy-collins-3004_character_i-was-a-pretty-happy-kid-i-had-to-fake-i_1946952.png)

> [There's a lot of unconscious activity that goes on I think in the composition of a poem.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/there-s-a-lot-of-unconscious-activity-that-goes-on-i-think-in-the/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d52/billy-collins-3004_activity_there-s-a-lot-of-unconscious-activity-th_2222661.png)

> [...the trouble with poetry is that it encourages the writing of more poetry...](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/the-trouble-with-poetry-is-that-it-encourages-the-writing-of-more/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f25/billy-collins-3004_poetry_the-trouble-with-poetry-is-that-it-encou_1987397.png)

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## More by Billy Collins

> [“The whole idea of it makes me feel Like I’m coming down with something, Something worse than any stomach ache Or the headaches I…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/the-whole-idea-of-it-makes-me-feel-like-i-m-coming-down-with/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

> [I think clarity is the real risk in poetry because you are exposed. You're out in the open field. You're actually saying things that…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/i-think-clarity-is-the-real-risk-in-poetry-because-you-are-exposed/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

> [...pleasure, of course, is a slippery word… Our pleasures ultimately belong to us, not to the pleasure's so](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/pleasure-of-course-is-a-slippery-word-our-pleasures-ultimately-belong/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

> [I stared up at the ebbing quarter moon and the stars scattered like a handful of salt across the faraway sky...](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/i-stared-up-at-the-ebbing-quarter-moon-and-the-stars-scattered-like-a/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

> [Death is what makes life fun.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/death-is-what-makes-life-fun/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

> [A trouble with poetry is the presence of presumptuousness in poetry, the sense you get in a poem that the poet takes for granted…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/a-trouble-with-poetry-is-the-presence-of-presumptuousness-in-poetry/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

> [You come by your style by learning what to leave out. At first you tend to overwrite—embellishment instead of insight. You either continue to…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/you-come-by-your-style-by-learning-what-to-leave-out-at-first-you/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

> [But my heart is always propped up in a field on its tripod, ready for the next arrow.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/but-my-heart-is-always-propped-up-in-a-field-on-its-tripod-ready-for/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

> [I can hear the library humming in the night, a choir of authors murmuring inside their books along the unlit, alphabetical shelves, Giovanni Pontano…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/i-can-hear-the-library-humming-in-the-night-a-choir-of-authors/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

> [Every Day Is for the Thief is a vivid, episodic evocation of the truism that you can't go home again; but that doesn't mean…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/every-day-is-for-the-thief-is-a-vivid-episodic-evocation-of-the/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

> [Humor, for me, is really a gate of departure. Its a way of enticing a reader into a poem so that less funny things…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/humor-for-me-is-really-a-gate-of-departure-its-a-way-of-enticing-a/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

> [You know how sometimes you just have a memory of looking up and seeing a face looking over your crib and then remember nothing…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/you-know-how-sometimes-you-just-have-a-memory-of-looking-up-and/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

> [Usually the poems are written in one sitting. There's always a groping towards some satisfying ending. But I'd say the hardest part is not…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/usually-the-poems-are-written-in-one-sitting-there-s-always-a-groping/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

> [I was influenced by the Beats because I actually just began to commit adolescence around 1955, when "Howl" and Rebel Without a Cause and…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/i-was-influenced-by-the-beats-because-i-actually-just-began-to-commit/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

> [Some difficulty is warranted and other difficulty I think is gratuitous. And I think I can tell the difference. There are certainly very difficult…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/billy-collins/some-difficulty-is-warranted-and-other-difficulty-i-think-is/)

[Billy Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/billy-collins/)

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                        "text": "When I'm constructing a poem, I'm trying to write one good line after another. One solid line after another. You know a lot of the lines - some hold up better as lines than others. But I'm not thinking of just writing a paragraph and then chopping it up.",
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                        "text": "When I began to dare to be clear, because I think clarity is the real risk in poetry because you are exposed. You're out in the open field. You're actually saying things that are comprehensible, and it's easy to criticize something you can understand.",
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                        "text": "Listeners are kind of ambushed... if a poem just happens to be said when they're listening to the radio. The listener doesn't have time to deploy what I call their 'poetry deflector shields' that were installed in high school - there's little time to resist the poem.",
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                        "text": "“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.”",
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                        "text": "Part of writing is discovering the rules of the game and then deciding whether to follow the rules or to break them. The great thing about the game of poetry is that it's always your turn - I guess that goes back to my being an only child. So once it's under way, there is a sense of flow.",
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                        "text": "I think my work has to do with a sense that we are attempting, all the time, to create a logical, rational path through the day. To the left and right there are an amazing set of distractions that we usually can't afford to follow. But the poet is willing to stop anywhere.",
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                        "text": "I always think W.S. Merwin's poems will last of anyone writing today. If I had to bet on posterity I would bet Merwin. My poems could easily evaporate. So I don't know. If you find yourself as a writer thinking about posterity you should probably go out for a brisk walk or something.",
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                        "text": "I started moving away from poets like Wallace Stevens and Hart Crane and started reading poets like, again, Karl Shapiro, Howard Nemerov, Philip Larkin, and the British poets who were imported through that important anthology put together by Alvarez - and those would include Thom Gunn and Ted Hughes. And I think these poets gave me assurance that there were other ways to write besides the rather involuted style of high modernism whose high priests were Pound, Eliot and Stevens, and Crane perhaps.",
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                        "text": "Another trouble with poetry - and I'm gonna stop the list at two - is the presence of presumptuousness in poetry, the sense you get in a poem that the poet takes for granted an interest on the reader's part in the poet's autobiographical life, in the poet's memories, problems, difficulties and even minor perceptions.",
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                        "text": "The poem is not, as someone put it, deflective of entry. But the real question is, 'What happens to the reader once he or she gets inside the poem?' That's the real question for me, is getting the reader into the poem and then taking the reader somewhere, because I think of poetry as a kind of form of travel writing.",
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                        "text": "As soon as I start to write I'm very aware, I'm trying to be aware that a reader just might well pick up this poem, a stranger. So when I'm writing - and I think that this is important for all writers - I'm trying to be a writer and a reader back and forth. I write two lines or three lines. I will immediately stop and turn into a reader instead of a writer, and I'll read those lines as if I had never seen them before and as if I had never written them.",
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                        "text": "To write poetry is to be very alone, but you always have the company of your influences. But you also have the company of the form itself, which has a kind of consciousness. I mean, the sonnet will simply tell you, that's too many syllables or that's too many lines or that's the wrong place. So, instead of being alone, you're in dialogue with the form.",
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                        "text": "“ Picnic, Lightning It is possible to be struck by a meteor or a single-engine plane while reading in a chair at home. Safes drop from rooftops and flatten the odd pedestrian mostly within the panels of the comics, but still, we know it is possible, as well as the flash of summer lightning, the thermos toppling over, spilling out on the grass. And we know the message can be delivered from within. The heart, no valentine, decides to quit after lunch, the power shut off like a switch, or a tiny dark ship is unmoored into the flow of the body’s rivers, the brain a monastery, defenseless on the shore. This is what I think about when I shovel compost into a wheelbarrow, and when I fill the long flower boxes, then press into rows the limp roots of red impatiens— the instant hand of Death always ready to burst forth from the sleeve of his voluminous cloak. Then the soil is full of marvels, bits of leaf like flakes off a fresco, red-brown pine needles, a beetle quick to burrow back under the loam. Then the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue, the clouds a brighter white, and all I hear is the rasp of the steel edge against a round stone, the small plants singing with lifted faces, and the click of the sundial as one hour sweeps into the next.”",
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                        "text": "“ Marginalia Sometimes the notes are ferocious, skirmishes against the author raging along the borders of every page in tiny black script. If I could just get my hands on you, Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien, they seem to say, I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head. Other comments are more offhand, dismissive - Nonsense.\" \"Please!\" \"HA!!\" - that kind of thing. I remember once looking up from my reading, my thumb as a bookmark, trying to imagine what the person must look like who wrote \"Don't be a ninny\" alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson. Students are more modest needing to leave only their splayed footprints along the shore of the page. One scrawls \"Metaphor\" next to a stanza of Eliot's. Another notes the presence of \"Irony\" fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal. Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers, Hands cupped around their mouths. Absolutely,\" they shout to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin. Yes.\" \"Bull's-eye.\" \"My man!\" Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points rain down along the sidelines. And if you have managed to graduate from college without ever having written \"Man vs. Nature\" in a margin, perhaps now is the time to take one step forward. We have all seized the white perimeter as our own and reached for a pen if only to show we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages; we pressed a thought into the wayside, planted an impression along the verge. Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria jotted along the borders of the Gospels brief asides about the pains of copying, a bird singing near their window, or the sunlight that illuminated their page- anonymous men catching a ride into the future on a vessel more lasting than themselves. And you have not read Joshua Reynolds, they say, until you have read him enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling. Yet the one I think of most often, the one that dangles from me like a locket, was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye I borrowed from the local library one slow, hot summer. I was just beginning high school then, reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room, and I cannot tell you how vastly my loneliness was deepened, how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed, when I found on one page A few greasy looking smears and next to them, written in soft pencil- by a beautiful girl, I could tell, whom I would never meet- Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love.”",
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                        "text": "“Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes\" 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. 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.”",
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                        "text": "“ Japan Today I pass the time reading a favorite haiku, saying the few words over and over. It feels like eating the same small, perfect grape again and again. I walk through the house reciting it and leave its letters falling through the air of every room. I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it. I say it in front of a painting of the sea. I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf. I listen to myself saying it, then I say it without listening, then I hear it without saying it. And when the dog looks up at me, I kneel down on the floor and whisper it into each of his long white ears. It’s the one about the one-ton temple bell with the moth sleeping on its surface, and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating pressure of the moth on the surface of the iron bell. When I say it at the window, the bell is the world and I am the moth resting there. When I say it into the mirror, I am the heavy bell and the moth is life with its papery wings. And later, when I say it to you in the dark, you are the bell, and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you, and the moth has flown from its line and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.”",
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                        "text": "“The History Teacher Trying to protect his students' innocence he told them the Ice Age was really just the Chilly Age, a period of a million years when everyone had to wear sweaters. And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age, named after the long driveways of the time. The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more than an outbreak of questions such as \"How far is it from here to Madrid?\" \"What do you call the matador's hat?\" The War of the Roses took place in a garden, and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom on Japan. The children would leave his classroom for the playground to torment the weak and the smart, mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses, while he gathered up his notes and walked home past flower beds and white picket fences, wondering if they would believe that soldiers in the Boer War told long, rambling stories designed to make the enemy nod off.”",
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                        "text": "A trouble with poetry is the presence of presumptuousness in poetry, the sense you get in a poem that the poet takes for granted an interest on the reader's part in the poet's autobiographical life, in the poet's memories, problems, difficulties and even minor perceptions. I try to presume that no one is interested in me. And I think experience bears that out. No one's interested in the experiences of a stranger - let's put it that way. And then you have difficulty combined with presumptuousness, which is the most dire trouble with poetry.",
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                        "text": "There's this pet phrase about writing that is bandied around particularly in workshops about \"finding your own voice as a poet\", which I suppose means that you come out from under the direct influence of other poets and have perhaps found a way to combine those influences so that it appears to be your own voice. But I think you could also put it a different way. You, quote, find your voice, unquote, when you are able to invent this one character who resembles you, obviously, and probably is more like you than anyone else on earth, but is not the equivalent to you.",
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