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I could look at you forever and never see the two of us together

Billy Collins

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Billy Collins
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: March 22
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Manhattan borough
New York City
William James Collins
Forever
Two
Together
Look
Looks
Never

More quotes by Billy Collins

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I just think that the world of workshops - I've written a poem that is a parody of workshop talk, I've written a poem that is a kind of parody of a garrulous poet at a poetry reading who spends an inordinate amount of time explaining the poem before reading it, I've written a number of satirical poems about other poets.
Billy Collins
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I think more influential than Emily Dickinson or Coleridge or Wordsworth on my imagination were Warner Brothers, Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes cartoons.
Billy Collins
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I hope the poem, as it goes on, gets more complicated, a little more demanding, a little more ambiguous or speculative, so that we're drifting away from the casual beginning of the poem into something a little more serious.
Billy Collins
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The trouble with poetry is that it encourages the writing of more poetry.
Billy Collins
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This love for everyday things, part natural from the wide eye of Infancy, part a literary calculation
Billy Collins
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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.
Billy Collins
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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.
Billy Collins
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The first line is the DNA of the poem the rest of the poem is constructed out of that first line. A lot of it has to do with tone because tone is the key signature for the poem. The basis of trust for a reader used to be meter and end-rhyme.
Billy Collins
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I see all of us reading ourselves away from ourselves, straining in circles of light to find more light until the line of words becomes a trail of crumbs that we follow across a page of fresh snow.
Billy Collins
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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 penetrate it if I could, perhaps.
Billy Collins
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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.
Billy Collins
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I love to move like a mouse inside this puzzle for the body, balancing the wish to be lost with the need to be found.
Billy Collins
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All I wanted was to be a pea of being inside the green pod of time.
Billy Collins
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You will always be the bread and the knife, not to mention the crystal goblet and—somehow—the wine.
Billy Collins
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I see woefully obscure poetry as simply a kind of verbal rudeness.
Billy Collins
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Radio is such a perfect medium for the transmission of poetry, primarily because there just is the voice, there's no visual distraction.
Billy Collins
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But my heart is always propped up in a field on its tripod, ready for the next arrow.
Billy Collins
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More often than not in poetry I find difficulty to be gratuitous and show-offy and camouflaging, experimental to a kind of insane degree - a difficulty which really ignores the possibility of having a sensible reader.
Billy Collins
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One of these days I'm-a make me a book out of you.
Billy Collins
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Death is what makes life fun.
Billy Collins