Billy Collins

One of my favorite poets is Billy Collins.  He often writes about the art of writing poetry.  Here is one called "The Poems of Others," that comes from his new book of poems, Ballistics:


The Poems of Others


Is there no end to it
the way they keep popping up in magazines
then congregate in the drafty orphanage of a book?


You would think the elm would speak up,
but like the dawn it only inspires - then more of them
   appear.
Not even the government can put a stop to it.


Just this morning, one approached me like a possum,
snout twitching, impossible to ignore.
Another looked out of the water at me like an otter.


How can anyone dismiss them
when they dangle from the eaves of houses
and throw themselves in our paths?


Perhaps I am being harsh, even ridiculous.
It could have been the day at the zoo
that put me this way - all the children by the cages - 


as if only my poems had the right to exist
and people would come down from the hills
in the evening to view them in rooms of white marble.


So I will take the advice of the mentors
and put this in a drawer for a week
maybe even a year or two and then have a calmer
   look at it - 


but for now I am going to take a walk
through this nearly silent neighborhood
that it my winter resting place, my hibernaculum,


and get my mind off the poems of others
even as they peer down from the trees
or bark at my passing in the guise of local dogs.


And here is a poem that I wrote about poetry and writing, called "Writing Circles:"

I say that everything has been thought of

Every metaphor and simile has been compared

And every phrase of mere brilliance has been placed within its perfect syntax

I imagine the last poet glancing at the sky and seeing life’s melody play before him in the clouds, turning to his typewriter and painting it for others to see and hear

The lonely woman in the park who sees the green grass before her and imagines the small world that plays out beneath her bare feet, writing the small screenplay in her leather-bound notebook.

And the clever college graduate who pulls out his Blackberry to discover that time is a cage that traps us all in its sad game of catch and we have no base to wait on and think for one moment, sending along his message that will be read once and tossed into a recycle bin

The poet’s typewritten words are later found within the messages of a recycled newspaper advertisement about a city whose sky is polluted by paper factory smoke

The lonely woman’s ink seeps through the ground to the ants below, who play out the script she wrote for them and carry away the small pieces of paper one word at a time

And the clever college graduate’s message is lost within the galaxy of cyberspace where moons and planets spin around a black hole and never quite find their way to the light of the sun

And I lay down my pencil, thankful for the revolving life we live and the way things must come full circle…