Billy Collins

Criticism does have its limit, and sometimes it can turn absurd.

And our conversation on this subject reminded me of a wonderful poem by the poet Billy Collins that takes a wry look at creative critique.

It's entitled, The Workshop.

I might as well begin by saying how much I like the title.

I mean, you know, she loved and devoted her life to poetry, which meant reading every, you know, everything she could forever, you know, and, um, and it all comes through, um, in, in craft points that it's really easy to dismiss as, oh, she's, you know, a self-help guru masquerading as a poet or something, but, but, you know, she's so much poet, so much craft, so much history, so much reading as goes into all their work.

another way Mary Oliver is directly in conversation with somebody is Billy Collins, because what do Mary Oliver and Billy Collins have in common? Quite a bit.

But one of the things is they both have a whole book devoted to dog poems.

So I don't think, I don't think Billy Collins was unaware.

Let's just say that she had a book of dog poems that had done well when he came up with his, but I thought we'd look at one of those too.

And I asked Percy, um, I asked Percy how I should live my life.

yeah.

That would be nice.

You're listening to the Florida Roundup from your Florida Public Radio station.

So here we are, a quarter century after the 9-11 terrorist attacks in Manhattan, in the field in Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon just outside Washington, D.C. Billy Collins calls Central Florida home for part of the year this time of year.

He's 85, and he's a senior distinguished fellow at the Winter Park Institute.

And 25 years ago, Carlton, he was the United States Poet Laureate.

And it was very moving going to Ground Zero much later and actually finding the names carved there that had been in my poem.

That was former United States Poet Laureate speaking with our partner station, Central Florida Public Media.

His name is Billy Collins.

He will read his poem, The Names, at a commemoration hosted by Rollins College in Winter Park this evening.

Gary delivers again, and this time a one-handed wave as Billy Cowan went for a pitch about a foot outside.

So Gary Peters working away to the right-handed power hitter, Billy Collins, and strikes out Collins to bring about the second out of the inning.

The batter will be first place for Jim Fregosi.

Jim flies to center field in the first inning.

Not even I really wanted to read because I thought that's what it was supposed to be.

And it wasn't until Billy Collins made it look easy where there was a... you can write a mediocre Billy Collins poem pretty easily, but you can't write a Billy Collins, Billy Collins poem easily.

But as an example, it's like, oh, he's just saying what's on his mind.

And like the syntax isn't so fragmented that there's no hope of getting a grip on what this person's trying to communicate.