Billy Collins

First, her tippet made of tulle,easily lifted off her shoulders and laidon the back of a wooden chair
And her bonnet,the bow undone with a light forward pull
Then the long white dress, a morecomplicated matter with mother-of-pearlbuttons...

The murkiness of the local garage is not so densethat you cannot make out the calendar of pinupdrawings on the wall above a bench of tools
Your ears are ringing with the sound ofthe mechanic hammering on your exhaust pipe,and as you look clos...

In most self-portraits it is the face that dominates:
Cezanne is a pair of eyes swimming in brushstrokes,
Van Gogh stares out of a halo of swirling darkness,
Rembrant looks relieved as if he were taking a breatherfrom painting The B...

I have never been fishing on the Susquehannaor on any river for that matterto be perfectly honest
Not in July or any monthhave I had the pleasure--if it is a pleasure--of fishing on the Susquehanna
I am more likely to be foundin a quiet ...

I ask them to take a poemand hold it up to the lightlike a color slide or press an ear against its hive
I say drop a mouse into a poemand watch him probe his way out,or walk inside the poem's roomand feel the walls for a light switch
I w...

The Trouble with Poetry:
A Poem of
Billy
The trouble with poetry,

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,skirmishes against the authorraging along the borders of every pagein tiny black script
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O’Brien,they seem to say,
I would bolt the d...