Conversations with Billy Collins

John Cusatis

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781496840660
• eBook ISBN: 9781496840684
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

Billy Collins "puts the 'fun' back in profundity, " says poet Alice Fulton. Known for what he has called "hospitable" poems, which deftly blend wit and erudition, Collins (b. 1941) is a poet of nearly unprecedented popularity. His work is also critically esteemed and well represented in The Norton Anthology of American Literature. An English professor for five decades, Collins was fifty-seven when his poetry began gathering considerable international attention. Conversations with Billy Collins chronicles the poet's career beginning with his 1998 interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air, which exponentially expanded his readership, three years prior to his being named United States Poet Laureate. Other interviewers range from George Plimpton, founder of the Paris Revi e w, to Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Henry Taylor to a Presbyterian pastor, a physics professor, and a class of AP English Literature students. Over the course of the twenty-one interviews included in the volume, Collins discusses such topics as discovering his persona, that consistently affable voice that narrates his often wildly imaginative poems; why poetry is so loved by children but often met with anxiety by high school students; and his experience composing a poem to be recited during a joint session of Congress on the first anniversary of 9/11, a tragedy that occurred during his tenure as poet laureate. He also explores his love of jazz, his distaste for gratuitously difficult poetry and autobiographical poems, and his beguiling invention of a mock poetic form: the paradelle. Irreverent, incisive, and deeply life-affirming—like his twelve volumes of poetry—these interviews, gathered for the first time in one volume, will edify and entertain readers in the way his sold-out readings have done for the past quarter century.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chronology
• Describing Ordinary Feelings
• Interview with Billy Collins
• Billy Collins, The Art of Poetry No.
• Billy Collins with Henry Taylor
• The Poet and the Poem at the Library of Congress: An Interview with Billy Collins by Grace Cavalieri
• Billy Collins, Bringing Poetry to the Public
• A Brisk Walk: Billy Collins in Conversation
• Brick by Brick—A Conversation with Billy Collins
• The Pleasures of Disorientation: A Conversation with Billy Collins
• “A Poem Should Not Mean but Move”: Billy Collins Speaks with AP Literature Students
• Wordsworth’s Heir
• Interview with Billy Collins
• A Conversation with Billy Collins
• When Pastors Learn from Poets: Billy Collins Visits Princeton Theological Seminary
• Former Poet Laureate Billy Collins on His New Collection—And How Poetry Is Changing
• Q and A with Billy Collins
• A Conversation with Billy Collins
• Poet Billy Collins on Jazz and Poetry
• “The Pure Musicality of Language”: Billy Collins Speaks with AP Literature Students
• Poet Billy Collins on Mortality, Gratitude, and the Importance of Sitting and Doing Nothing
• “One Gift of Sight after Another”: Billy Collins on Whale Day
• Index