Billy Collins

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Articles

THE PEACOCK - Winter Park Magazine

Sep 26, 2024 | winterparkmag.com | Billy Collins

The PeacockI don’t know why the peacockcrossed this ordinarysuburban road, but it tookmuch longer than any sprinting chickenwould have, due to its substantial tailand royal, processional gait. Thus, the people in the head carswere able to follow its every stepuntil the long concluding plumage,with no reason to display its iridescentfan of eyes, was dragged over the far curb,wherever it happened to be heading—to India or ancient Java, I figured, before stepping on the gas.
A DOG ON HIS MASTER

Jun 24, 2024 | winterparkmag.com | Billy Collins

It’s not often that we get to hear what our dog is thinking. Even more rare is to overhear a dog waxing philosophical as he contemplates his own mortality relative to his master’s. “We’re buying a heartache,” my father warned before he finally gave in to my entreaties to have a dog. The dog in the poem only wishes that his owner shares that awareness. Not much to ask, especially, as we already know, the dog is likely to go first through the final door.
Streaming conscious and unconscious

Apr 10, 2024 | saipantribune.com | Billy Collins

“So many of us streaming along—all of humanity, really—moving in perfect sync, yet each lost in the room of a perfect dream.” —excerpt from The Parade by Billy Collins, U.S. Poet Laureate 2001 to 2003.
ELK RIVER FALLS - Winter Park Magazine

Apr 1, 2024 | winterparkmag.com | Billy Collins

Waterfalls don’t have stanza breaks or any final punctuation that would interfere with their falling. So in keeping with their unbroken continuousness, I rendered this particular falls in one stanza and, indeed, one long sentence. It’s a poem of direct observation until the point where I lose sight of the river as it continues on its way around a bend.
THE POEM - Winter Park Magazine

Jan 3, 2024 | winterparkmag.com | Billy Collins

The small poem is as old as poetry itself, extendingfrom Martial’s 1st-century epigrams through Japanese haiku to the miniatures of today. Issa gives us: “don’t worry, spider/ I keep house/ casually.”Charles Simic has one titled “Evening Chess:” “The black Queen raised high/ in my father’s angry hand.” And here’s A. R. Ammons’s “Their Sex Life:” “One failure on/ top of another.” Such tiny verbal bursts radically exemplify poetry’s celebrated ability to fit large matter into small spaces.
A WRITER TO THE END

Oct 5, 2023 | winterparkmag.com | Billy Collins

Our final departure has been pictured in many ways, some involving wings and chariots. Being suctioned upward into a radiance has been suggested. Here is just another way to go, this time more literary. The writer uses the tools of his trade to make his way to the exit. The vanishing point becomes the dot of the period on his final sentence, or — which applies here — a full stop.
SUPINE - Winter Park Magazine

Jun 29, 2023 | winterparkmag.com | Billy Collins

My persona — the voice who speaks my poems — is not exactly me. I mean I enjoy lying on the summer grass for the cumulus action above as much as the next guy, but my persona does this for a living. In the tradition of the Romantic dawdler, he prefers doing what appears to be nothing, over the obvious something that is keeping others busy.
THE FISH - Winter Park Magazine

Apr 1, 2023 | winterparkmag.com | Billy Collins

Dining alone without the aid of a book to read or a cellphone to stare at is something of an art. The need in most of us for companionship can reveal itself through odd, compensatory behavior. Take this conversation I once had with an entrée. It was the fish who initiated the exchange, and hardly a word was spoken aloud, but I was clearly a willing participant. Plus, as a result, a kind of mutual sympathy between man and fish was achieved, bringing both the meal and the poem to an end.