Billy Collins, often hailed as the most popular 21st-century poet in America, rose to prominence with his 1991 publication, ‘Questions about Angels.’ He is known to use wit to speak on deeper, more profound topics.
Collins has served two terms as the US poet laureate. His recent endeavors include readings at The White House, hosting an NPR radio program, and delivering TED talks. He is currently on the board at ‘The Alaska Quarterly Review’ and was elected into The American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2016.
Billy Collins’ piece from ‘Questions about Angels’ humorously explores diverse religious views of the afterlife, from animal reincarnation to deity encounters.
While you are preparing for sleep, brushing your teeth,
or riffling through a magazine in bed,
the dead of the day are setting out on their journey.
Billy Collins’ ‘Aristotle’ is a poetic tribute in three sections, each vividly depicting life’s stages: beginning, middle, and end.
This is the beginning.
Almost anything can happen.
This is where you find
the creation of light, a fish wriggling onto land,
In the poem, ‘The Revenant’, Billy Collins channels the spirit of a deceased dog and subverts the accepted relationship of man and his best friend.
I am the dog you put to sleep,
as you like to call the needle of oblivion,
come back to tell you this simple thing:
I never liked you--not one bit.
Inspired by John James Audubon’s ‘Birds of America,’ this poem reflects on the disconnect between humanity and nature, as imagined through Audubon’s perspective.
Early this morning
in a rumpled bed,
listening to birdsong
through the propped-open windows,
‘Introduction to Poetry’ by Billy Collins is a beautiful poem that speaks about the nature of poetry. The poet considers how poetry should be appreciated and comprehended.
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
Billy Collins’ ‘The Art of Drowning’ humorously explores the moments before death and the cliché of life flashing before one’s eyes.
I wonder how it all got started, this business
about seeing your life flash before your eyes
while you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence,
could startle time into such compression, crushing
This poem reflects on the intimate connection between writing, smoking, and music, ending with the evocative image of a face illuminated by words.
There are many that I miss
having sent my last one out a car window
sparking along the road one night, years ago.
Billy Collins’ satirical poem examines poetry in everyday life, using the metaphor of a postcard as a poem on vacation.
We do not speak like Petrarch or wear a hat like Spenser
and it is not fourteen lines
like furrows in a small, carefully plowed field
‘Whale Day’ by Billy Collins takes readers on a journey of quiet reflection, where the everyday collides with nature’s grand mysteries.
Today I was awakened by strong coffee
and the awareness that the earth is busy with whales
even though we can’t see any
unless we have embarked on a whale watch,
Billy Collins’ ‘The Breather’ uses a horror movie metaphor, echoing ‘When A Stranger Calls’ to convey a revelation about love coming from within.
Just as in the horror movies
when someone discovers that the phone calls
are coming from inside the house
In ‘Questions About Angels,’ the speaker wonders why people are not more imaginative or curious in their questions about metaphysical beings. He interrogates religious tradition by envisioning angels in a variety of forms, the last being a single dancer in a jazz bar, whose beautiful form inspires spirituality in the speaker.
Of all the questions you might want to ask
about angels, the only one you ever hear
is how many can dance on the head of a pin.
‘Afternoon with Irish Cows’ describes one speaker’s presumptions about the interior lives of cows and the power that sound has over human understanding.
There were a few dozen who occupied the field
across the road from where we lived,
stepping all day from tuft to tuft,
their big heads down in the soft grass,
In ‘Aimless Love,” the speaker finds himself falling love with the precarious beauty of everyday life.
This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.
‘On Turning Ten’ by Billy Collins is a “coming of age” poem that talks about the poet’s feelings when he turned ten years old.
The whole idea of it makes me feel
Like I’m coming down with something,
Something worse than any stomach ache
Or the headaches I get from reading in bad light
‘My Number’ by Billy Collins takes a jocular approach to wrangling with the existential anxieties brought on when thinking about death.
Is Death miles away from this house,
reaching for a widow in Cincinnati
or breathing down the neck of a lost hiker
in British Columbia?
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