My Mini Anthology
Billy Collins
By Raven Woods Per. 5
English 9 5//09Table of Contents
Table of Contents
• Preface of Billy Collins
• Preface Con’t
• The History Teacher
• SHE WAS JUST SEVENTEEN
• Another Reason Why I Don't Keep a Gun in the House
Preface of Billy Collins
• His real name is William Collins
• Born on March 22,1941 in New
York City. He is now 68 years
old.
• At home Collins has been
recognized as a Literary Lion
of the New York Public Library
and selected as New York
City’s greatest poet (2005).
• He is just an poet but just
books full of his poetry. His
poetry was featured in The New
Yorker, The Paris Review, and
The American Scholar.
Preface Con’t
•
•
•
He wrote about 8 collections of his
poetry.
The titles are: Questions About
Angels;The Art of
Drowning;Picnic,lightning;Taking off
Emily Dickinson’s Clothes; Sailing
alone Around the Room: New and
Selected Poems;Nine Horses; and The
Trouble With Poetry And Other Poems.
He was featured on NPR’s Prairie
Home Companion and Fresh Air.He
was recently named the official US
Poet Laureate, after named as April
2000 featured poet in Poetry
Magazine.
•
•
•
Questions about Angels won Collins
the 1990 National Poetry Series
competition. He also received a nearly
unprecedented six-figure deal form
Random House for his next three
books. He is a professor of English in
the beginning of 1971 and he still
performs poetry readings.
He also says that poetry is death. He
claims that he is a thief that steels from
other poets poems. He mentions this in
one of his books: The Trouble with
Poetry: And Other Poems.
For several year he has conducted a
summer poetry workshops in Ireland at
a University.
Preface Con’t 269
•
Has been called “ the most popular
poet in America”. His father was a
electrician, and his mother was nurse.
Both of his parents was forty when he
was born. He grow up in Jackson
Heights. He was really well know in
New York. He is still writing poetry
today even though he is 68 years old.
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?"
http://teachertrenches.blogspot.com/2008/07/billy-collins-historyteacher-catcher.html
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.
SHE WAS JUST SEVENTEEN
• Mid-winter evening,
alone at a sushi bar—
just me and this eel.
• Awake in the dark—
so that is how rain sounds
on a magnolia.
•
http://www.modernhaiku.org/mhbooks/collinsSheWasJustSeventeen2006.html
Another Reason Why I Don't Keep a Gun in the House
•
•
•
The neighbors' dog will not stop
barking.
He is barking the same high,
rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave
the house.
They must switch him on on their
way out.
The neighbors' dog will not stop
barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony
full blast
but I can still hear him muffled
under the music,
barking, barking, barking,
and now I can see him sitting in the
orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if
Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.
•
•
When the record finally ends he is
still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section
barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor
who is
entreating him with his baton
while the other musicians listen in
respectful
silence to the famous barking dog
solo,
that endless coda that first
established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.
http://project1.caryacademy.org/echoes/0304/billy_collins/inspiredpoemscollins.htm