“The Most Popular Poet in America”
Jack Doyle
Erin Morris
Brad Fortunato
BILLY COLLINS
Background
 Born- New York City on March 22, 1941
 Son of William and Katherine
 William- electrician
 Katherine- nurse
Background
 B.A.- college of Holy Cross
 M.A. & P.H.D. – university of California
 Won many different awards including poet of
the year
Background
 Leads a normal life in as a professor at
Lehman university of the City University of
New York.
 Appointed as poet laureate of the United
States from 2001 to 2003
influences
 Made suburban and for the middle class
 Used other poets examples to find himself
 Others poems influenced him
 The New Poetry book got him into poetry
 Influenced by nature
influences-other poets

George Herbert, William
Wordsworth, and John
Donne.
Memorizing “The Sun Rising” by
John Donne
BY BILLY COLLINS
Every reader loves the way he
tells off
the sun, shouting busy old fool
into the English skies even
though they
were likely cloudy on that
seventeenth-century morning.
And it’s a pleasure to spend this
sunny day
But after a few steps into stanza
number two,
wherein the sun is blinded by his
mistress’s eyes,
I can feel the first one begin to
fade
like sky-written letters on a
windy day.
And by the time I have taken in
the third,
the second is likewise gone, a
blown-out candle now,
a wavering line of acrid smoke.
Then, after my circling,
better than the courteous
dominion
of her being all states and him all
princes,
better than love’s power to shrink
the wide world to the size of a
bedchamber,
and better even than the
compression
of all that into the rooms of these
So it’s not until I leave the house three stanzas
and walk three times around this is how, after hours stepping up
hidden lake
and down the poem,
that the poem begins to show
testing the plank of every line,
any interest in walking by my
it goes with me now, contracted
side.
into a little spot within.
influences
 His poems convey the fact that his life isn’t
very exciting.
 Bored as a child so he used his poems as an
escape.
 Tried to use humor, and transport himself to
different places.
 Exposed to these poems as a child
influences
 Aristotle influences his work
influences
 Everyday life influences his poems
No Time
By Billy Collins
In a rush this weekday morning,
I tap the horn as I speed past the cemetery
where my parents are buried
side by side beneath a slab of smooth
granite.
Then, all day, I think of him rising up
to give me that look
of knowing disapproval
while my mother calmly tells him to lie back
down.
Poem-
suburbs and nature influence him
Her
CANADA
BY BILLY COLLINS
BY BILLY COLLINS
“I am writing this on a strip of white birch bark
“There is no noisier place than the suburbs,
that I cut from a tree with a penknife.
someone once said to me
There is no other way to express adequately
as we were walking along a fairway,
the immensity of the clouds that are passing over
the farms
and every day is delighted to offer fresh
evidence:
and wooded lakes of Ontario and the endless
visibility
the chainsaw, the leaf-blower blowing
that hands you the horizon on a platter.
one leaf around an enormous house with
columns,
I am also writing this in a wooden canoe,
on Mondays and Thursdays the garbage truck
equipped with air brakes, reverse beeper, and
merciless grinder. “
a point of balance in the middle of Lake
Couchiching,
resting the birch bark against my knees.
I can feel the sun’s hands on my bare back,
but I am thinking of winter”
Literary Criticism
 John Taylor Says “His humor often seems
simply a means, a invitation to serious
reflection”
 We did find this in his poems, funny leading
to serious
 “some examples of playful imagination”
 You can tell in these poems that Collins is
letting his imagination run wild
Literary Criticism-Positive
 “uses humor to lead the reader into the place,
often a serious and surprising place”
 We found that the only type of humor in his
poems is irony
 “Collins often uses an abstract title which he
subsequently explores in a variety of concrete
images”
 This is very true- we found that the title was
only loosely connected to the poem itself
Literary Criticism-negative
 “seems to have been written in code”
 Seems clear but we understand why the
critics said this because his speech patterns
are so random
 “Collins technique produces poems that
evoke no emotional response from the
reader”
 We tend to agree with this statement we
don’t feel any emotional attachment to any
of the things in the poem
Literary criticism
 “He makes readers believe that the only way
to approach a poem is to ‘tie it to a chair with
a rope and torture a confession out of it’”
 Its hard to just skim his poems- you have to
really dig down and analyze them.
 “We seem to always know where we are in a
Billy Collins poem, but not where he is going”
 Billy Collins doesn’t follow one set format- he
just speaks what is on his mind
Thank You for listening
Billy Collins has made and
continues to make
numerous contributions
to modern poetry