Billy Collins On The Great Poets | Billy Collins | Big Think
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- Опубліковано 22 кві 2012
- Billy Collins On The Great Poets
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Coleridge’s “Conversation” poems inspire much of Collins’ work.
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Billy Collins:
One of the most popular living poets in the United States, Billy Collins was born in New York City in 1941. Collins is the author of nine books of poetry, including She Was Just Seventeen (2006), The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems (2005), Nine Horses (2002), and Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems (2001). His work appears regularly in such periodicals as Poetry, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Harper's Magazine, and has been featured in various textbooks and anthologies, including those for the Pushcart Prize and the annual Best American Poetry series. Between 2001 and 2004, Collins served two terms at the 11th Poet Laureate of the United States. In his home state, Collins has been recognized as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library (1992) and selected as the New York State Poet for 2004. Other honors include fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation, and the first annual Mark Twain Prize for Humor in Poetry. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College in the Bronx, where has taught for over thirty years. Ideas recorded at the 2007 Aspen Ideas Festival on: 7/4/07
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TRANSCRIPT:
Billy Collins: Well I mean poetry, I think, art moves in a kind of pendulum. You can see even from the Greeks the argument as to whether literature should be in the common tongue, or should it be in an elevated language? This pendulistic battle goes back and forth. Wordsworth for instance, to go back to him, wanted to write poetry, as he said, in the speaking language of men the way . . . he wanted to get speech back into it.
And so did Frost. And as _____ also the idea of bringing . . . bringing poetry into context with common speech. And the other camp would say that poetry has to be completely different from regular speech, that regular speech is down here and poetry takes place on another linguistic level. Those two voices, or those two opposed positions, I think pretty much throughout the history of English literature at least, have determined these various movements back and forth. And that would seem to be thanks to a number of poets that came after the high modernism of T.S. Elliot and Ezra Pound. And you can add Harper and Wallace Stevens. There’s been a movement back to the connection between poetry and common speech. Those big modernists tried to get beyond personality. They wanted to make something . . . poetry into something more than the expression of the individual personality. But personality seems to have returned to poetry.
Very helpful--I find myself reaching for my copy of Coleridge. What a positive influence you have been on my family, Billy.
My personal reverie has taken on a new level of importance.
this was very informative mister collin's description of the transition from a domestic setting to a mental journey in his poems has always been one of my favorite aspects of his poetry.
i especially enjoyed the poem purity for this reason,
True and Charles Bukowski was a trailblazer and I had a correspondence with him in the 1970s about 30 letters and the largest personal collection all his early chapbooks and rare offprint inscribed to William Corrington: “ here’s one for your bereavement”
Al
His take on Coleridge is fascinating.
Personality! Yes, thanks for the lovely chat.
"Poetry is much more effective and complete than prose. It stirs more deeply, for it is of a finer composition." ~ Words of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to Mary L. Lucas, Bahá’í Faith
Yes that was good, on the accent question I think he made up his own accent because its something useful to the US that can't be placed or traced.
The domestic setting, yes. And in William Carlos Williams: "the happy genius of my household".
Examples if individual poems would have been very helpful.
He sounds rather like Kevin Spacey. Where in the States is that accent from?
He also sounds like Michael Emerson from Lost.
It is such a pleasant voice.
@@mydogrosemary2556 He also looks like him.
Charles Bukowski was the greatest poet and short story writer of all time. And anyone who leaves him out of the great modern poets or shirt story writers are either jealous or ignorant.
Al
No
@@bacalauu6605 Why?
Can you please say why you think so? We all have a favorite poet or find a poet more inspiring then other, but you make just a claim without any information why is the case. Rumi, Hafez, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Yun Dong-ju, Ko Un, M. Eminescu, Nicole Labiș, Nichita Stănescu, Walt Whitman, Pablo Neruda, Du Fu, Li Bai, R. Tagore, Ana Blandiana, Unguretti, Leopardi, Virginia Wolf, Basho, Hugo, S. Essenin... One of these people I listed , and more that I didn't listed, are for some people the greatest.
would love to hear your reply to the questions herein!
Or, to write a Bukowski poem about this:
The best poet
of all
time
was Buk.
I saw a waitress
the other day
who had a smile
you could kill for
and a nice
pair of tits
you could kill for also.
Anyway,
better than Shakespeare
than Homer and Dante and whoever the fuck
was Buk.
he talks as he reads
be
He speaks signs of a great poet then ends it with what he does. 🤣. I have written poetry that did not return to me to my setting but to another one, other than the one I began at. He seems to be stuck on saying names of writers who are "famous" (which is over publicized) since I don't believe in fame. He says they are great, but he needs to realize that great writers are everywhere and plenty are not over marketed. I was not impressed by his approach in this video.