I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author's name on the shore. But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.

#WorldPoetryDay
#Poetry
#BlueskyPoetry
#BillyCollins

Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins

Forgetfulness (Billy Collins & Sufjan Stevens), by The Poetry Mixtape Project from the album I Have Wasted My Life: A Poetry Mixtape

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music's #CillianMurphysLimitedEdition

Billy Collins:
🎵 forgetfulness

#6music #BillyCollins

▶️ 🪄 Automagic 🔊 show 📻 playlist on Spotify

▶️ Song/Cover on #Bandcamp:

nightclub Billy Collins · The Best Cigarette · Song · 2005

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music's #CillianMurphysLimitedEdition

Billy Collins:
🎵 nightclub

#6music #BillyCollins

▶️ 🪄 Automagic 🔊 show 📻 playlist on Spotify

▶️ Song on #Spotify:

Today, a poem by Billy Collins over a nature photo.

Stardate: 2026.3.3 - "Today by Billy Collins"

A little poetry to put an added spring in your step. 🙏
#BillyCollins #Today #Spring #Poetry #Poem #Poet #PoetryOfTheDay #PoemOfTheDay #PoetOfTheDay #PoetryCommunity #PoetryLovers #SpringPoetry #SpringTime #SpringSeason #Nature #Photography #NatureSpring

In this episode, we hold #BillyCollins poem up to the light alongside a poem by #JackUnderwood. #Dogs #Beethoven #poetry
Available on podcast platforms - potify, Apple, etc
podcasts.apple.com/rw/podcast/w...

Online Registration

BILLY COLLINS POETRY
Experience & discuss 15-20 humorous, quirky, perceptive and delightful and ingenious poems by Collins. 2-session online community ed course, February 10 & 24 EST
tinyurl.com/34hxubkv
#poetry #poetrycommunity #billycollins #blueskypoets
#literature #humor #litthings #author

"To close out this—for us—momentous year, a light deft touch by the inimitable #BillyCollins (formerly #PoetLaureate of the 3UnitedStates).
"…a mind-bending-yea-saying note for a #New ear…"
www.sylviathompsonsblog.com/poem-for-the...

#NewYear2026 #OldYear2025 #MindBending #TheAfterlife

#Dogs #Books #Booksky #Poetry
#Illustrated w/ #Watercolor #Paintings 96 pgs.
#Authors
#BillyCollins
#PoetLaureate

#BillyCollins #Sonnet #Poetry

#BookSky #Literature #Poetry #Poet #BillyCollins

This poem made me laugh so much - my dog, Charlie, this morning rolled so elegantly in wet fox-poo & this helped me forgive him. By #billycollins

Thanks #bryonylavery for sharing!
#writingcommunity
#poetry
#booksky
#dogs #cockerpoo #poems

"Much of what is said here must be said twice, a reminder that no one takes an immediate interest in the pain of others."

~Billy Collins

#BlueSkyArtShow #Sky
#EastCoastKin #BillyCollins #photography
:

Billy Collins Dog Show

TFW a cherished friend sends you the perfect gift: Billy Collins’ Dog Show #dogs #gift #poetry #billycollins #booklovers #booksky

Adoration of Things In My World- For Billy Collins

A poem dedicated to American poet, Billy Collins about adoration of things in my world.Teaching young learners to pay attention to the world is important.
Click the link to discover more:
alanjwrightpoetrypizzazz.blogspot.com/2021/10/ador...

#poetry #poetryfriday #education #billycollins

...and just today, as on e again I returned to his book, I could not even

IMAGINE... what must be going on

#inside the heart of our Nationnal Poet Laureate #poet ...

#BlueSkyArtShow
#BillyCollins

Amazing evening seeing and meeting one of my literary heroes #BillyCollins at Abbey Presbyterian in Dublin. He read some of his greatest hits, and was absolutely gracious in meeting his fans. You'll see here our photo, and one of my books he signed— but also a note he wrote me over a decade ago.

I love #animation and #poetry together. Here's #BillyCollins.
1 minute 24 seconds of unsettling whimsy.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xov...

A group of children is strolling through the Botanical Garden, in the foreground pink-blushed blossom and green leaves of giant lotus plants growing in a pond. ------------------------------------- One of my favorite Billy Collins poems: Fishing on the Susquehanna in July BY BILLY COLLINS I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna or on any river for that matter to be perfectly honest. Not in July or any month have I had the pleasure—if it is a pleasure— of fishing on the Susquehanna. Please continue reading at the Poetry Foundation: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53810/fishing-on-the-susquehanna-in-july

⭐ Good Night, Good People Everywhere! 🌙

SUMMER IN VIENNA
Instead of Fishing On The Susquehanna In July*
Heading to Cooler Grounds at the #BotanicalGarden
Adjacent to Prince Eugene's Belvedere
Image © Merisi Vienna
#UrbanGaze #EastCoastKin #photography

*poem #BillyCollins (see ALT text)

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking. He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark that he barks every time they leave the house. They must switch him on on their way out. The neighbors' dog will not stop barking. I close all the windows in the house and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast but I can still hear him muffled under the music, barking, barking, barking, and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra, his head raised confidently as if Beethoven had included a part for barking dog. When the record finally ends he is still barking, sitting there in the oboe section barking, his eyes fixed on the conductor who is entreating him with his baton while the other musicians listen in respectful silence to the famous barking dog solo, that endless coda that first established Beethoven as an innovative genius.

#Poetry
#Poem
#BlueskyPoetry
#BillyCollins

Another Reason Why I Don't Keep A Gun In The House
by Billy Collins

Pages from Billy Collins’s journal with notes related to his poem “The Names,” ca. 2002. (Harry Ransom Center)

Did somebody say "Ransom notes"?

sites.utexas.edu/ransomcenter...

#notebooks #poetry
#BillyCollins #BadPun

Good news. My #poem "Ocean Days" has been shortlisted in the #Fish #Poetry #Competition 2025!
www.fishpublishing.com/2025/05/15/p...

#Adjudicator is #BillyCollins

April is National Poetry Month.

Celebrating all poetry opens for us with this gem from Billy Collins.

Poetry isn't deep as much as it reveals the depths within us.

Copyright 1988, 1996 by Billy Collins.

#poetry #nationalpoetrymonth #billycollins #poetlaureate #poet #goodmedicine

The Art of Drowning 2/2

#poetry #billycollins

Happy Birthday, Billy Collins, born on this day in 1941! In his honor, The Art of Drowning, in two parts.
1/2
#poetry #billycollins

Trying to protect his student’s innocence he told them the Ice Age was really just the Chilly Age, a period of a million years when everyone had to wear sweaters. And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age, named after the long driveways of the time. The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more than an outbreak of questions such as “How far is it from here to Madrid?” “What do you call the matador’s hat?” The War of the Roses took place in a garden, and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom on Japan. The children would leave his classroom for the playground and torment the weak and the smart, mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses, while he gathered his notes and walked home past flower beds and white picket fences, wondering if they would believe that soldiers in the Boer War told long, rambling stories designed to make the enemy nod off.

#Poetry
#Poem
#BlueskyPoetry
#BillyCollins

The History Teacher by Billy Collins

A library copy of "The Trouble with Poetry and other poems" by Billy Collins on a desk, the cover shows a bear holding a white rabbit.

New read: jumped (very stealthily) for joy when I found a Billy Collins collection I've not read in my local library last week, and it has been a lovely companion for a weekend in old haunts. #newread #billycollins #poetry #thetroublewithpoetryandotherpoems

If ever there were a spring day so perfect, so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze that it made you want to throw open all the windows in the house and unlatch the door to the canary's cage, indeed, rip the little door from its jamb, a day when the cool brick paths and the garden bursting with peonies seemed so etched in sunlight that you felt like taking a hammer to the glass paperweight on the living room end table, releasing the inhabitants from their snow-covered cottage so they could walk out, holding hands and squinting into this larger dome of blue and white, well, today is just that kind of day.

#Poetry
#Poem
#BlueskyPoetry
#BillyCollins

Today by Billy Collins

They don't get much bigger than Billy Collins and in Issue 3 - out on February 14th, FREE to subscribers - we have an interview AND an unpublished poem. Art by Ángel Arévalo Camacho. #billycollins #americanpoetry #unpublishedpoem #newyork