A TALK WITH BILLY COLLINS
Earlier this year, I had a chance to talk with Billy Collins, the U.S. PoetLaureate from 2001-2004 and celebrated author of Nine Horses, Sailing Alone Around the Room and a half-dozen other titles. Billy’s quick wit and astute observation of human triumphs and foibles comes out clearly in his works, which seem to simultaneously engage audiences in uproarious laughter and deep thought.

A professor of English at Lehman College, City University of New York, Billy Collins is one of the most important writers in the U.S. today. This is not only due to his work (he’s one of very few poets who can claim to sell more than 200,000 copies of their books), but also because of its dedication to furthering poetry and the written word in public education. While U.S. Poet Laureate, he created Poetry 180, a program anchored by an anthology of the same title. Ostensibly, teachers can read one poem a day (the average school year has approximately 180 days), enriching their students in the process.

In this interview, originally conducted for a Tucson, AZ weekly newsmagazine, Billy shares his passion for writing and the written word, his dedication to the education of young writers, and his quirky love of life.

QUIP:
“Any city that has a main road named Speedway is a place for me!”

ACCESSIBILITY OF POETRY:
“I learned through the influences of other people and other poets, like most writers. In college and graduate school, I read a lot of difficult, unapproachable poetry – Pound, Stevens, Eliot – so I wrote really obscure, mystifying poetry, but I really didn’t know what I was doing. Just by changing influences, it got me to a more direct style. From Walt Whitman, I learned intimacy. From Philip Larkin, I learned directness, and from Frank O’Hara, among others, I learned how to use wit and humor. Humor is entertaining, so once I had the skill to bring my sense of humor into poetry, it opened up a whole new understanding for me.”

BRINGING IN THE READER/CHALLENGE OF WRITER:
“That’s probably true in any culture. Poets have a particularly difficult time of it, because we’re not dealing with the delights of plot and suspense you ordinarily see in fiction. With poetry, you’re stepping into the consciousness of another person, not driving a story with an interesting plot. It’s incumbent upon the poet to use devices to engage readers. That’s why I preface each book with a note to the reader. It’s a very direct message of both thanks and invitation to participate in what comes next. Think of the reader as your co-participant, supplying half of every experience. I have very little patience for poetry or writing that seems to be oblivious of my presence as the reader. I speak frontally to the reader, like Whitman – he gives the sense that he’s talking right into your ear.

This whole “Dear Reader” matter brings back the 19th century novelists, like (Henry) Fielding, who used the phrase ‘Dear Reader’ a lot: ‘We are about to embark, dear reader, on a journey…” That kind of thing.

MATURATION PROCESS – SEEKING TO UNDERSTAND RATHER THAN TO BE UNDERSTOOD – SIMPLIFYING WRITING
“Younger poets are essentially hiding inside their poetry, concealing more than revealing. During the maturation process – and this was true for me as well – you become more revealed, not hiding so much; now you’re using the poems to convey yourself. Part of it is finding the right persona; the person who speaks my poems is not exactly me. I had to find a persona that not only accessed the poem but also knew what I was thinking and feeling.

POETRY 180
When I was named Poet Laureate of the United States, I was not obliged to do much, but it gave me an opportunity to launch national initiatives. I was pushed along those lines by the efforts of people like Robert Pinsky and Robert Hass. I wanted to do more than blow smoke rings in the office I had in Washington D.C.

I admit that part of Poetry 180 has autobiographical roots. When I went to high school in the late 1950s, most of the poets I was exposed to were dead, white, male, bearded and had three names – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edgar Allan Poe, Alfred Lord Tennyson. They seemed very musty, antique. I was lucky to get hold of Poetry magazine, where I saw the works of very contemporary poets who spoke to me and kept me up to date in a way the 19th Century poets could not.

So with Poetry 180, I wanted to accomplish two things:
1)Make poetry a part of everyday life for high school students
2)Bring them up to date with poems written in the last 10 years, so they could learn what poetry looks and sounds like right now, today

In high school, teachers are so besieged with work, assignments and demands that even the most well-meaning do not have time to keep up with the poetry scene. Even now, they’re still teaching William Carlos Williams’ “Red Wheelbarrow” as hip, modern, cutting edge work – but it’s at least 80 years old.

REVISING
Things like editing, revising, self-censorship, saying something stupid, talking to yourself, will anyone read, will anyone care and will I ever get published are all anxieties that all writers have to live with. The question is, Do you let these things get you, or do you put them out of your mind and write? It’s a matter of going forth and writing. What bothers me about revision is that, in MFA programs and workshops, they emphasize revision because once you’ve read a poem and discussed it for 15 minutes, what is there to do but bring that discussion into your poems and make changes? That seems to lead to an endless state of revisions. The initial energy, the chi that spawned the poem, can get lost in revision. One thing I will say about revision is this: You should always be taking away, not adding. It’s very dangerous to add something in revision. The best thing to do is remove adverbs and other words that seem fat; pare the poem down. As far as fiction goes, I like what Chekhov said: ‘When you’re done writing the draft, get rid of your beginning and ending, and keep the middle.’ He’s saying that the beginning gets you to your story, the story is in the middle, and the ending is probably a false conclusion you made just to finish the draft.”

JOY OF DISCOVERY, JOURNEY, THE NEXT MOMENT IN YOUR WORK
I think of the pleasure I get out of writing a poem, and how it moves me into some unknown territory. The reason a person is there to read it is to access its ending. It’s a compositional pleasure for me to have a new revelation or to end up in some unforeseen place. I like to think it offers a parallel pleasure for the reader to go along on the journey, then be in for a surprise at the ending.

I’m interested in where the hell this poem is going. I usually start off with very little – taking the dog for a walk, or what someone in some other time zone is doing right this second. I’ve gotten better at recognizing whether or not the beginning of a poem has travel potential, if the first lines continue into a whole new journey that no one else has taken, at least not in the exact way.”

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