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Quote by Billy Collins

“I was influenced by the Beats because I actually just began to commit adolescence around 1955, when "Howl" and Rebel Without a Cause and a lot of other new things were popping up. (Again I'm trying to give you a finite version of this career.) And then I came under the sway of Wallace Stevens when I was in college and graduate school, and basically set as a life goal the ambition of writing third-rate Wallace Stevens. I thought I would be completely content if I was recognized at some later point in my life as a third-rate Wallace Stevens.”

Quote by Billy Collins

Author

Billy Collins is a renowned American poet, born on March 22, 1941. His poetry is known for its simplicity, humor, and profound insights, making it popular among readers. Collins served as the United States Poet Laureate and taught at several universities. more

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“There's this pet phrase about writing that is bandied around particularly in workshops about "finding your own voice as a poet", which I suppose means that you come out from under the direct influence of other poets and have perhaps found a way to combine those influences so that it appears to be your own voice.”

Way Writing Mean Found Voice Influence Poet Findings Direct Phrases Pet Workshops

Author:Billy Collins

“You, quote, find your voice, unquote, when you are able to invent this one character who resembles you, obviously, and probably is more like you than anyone else on earth, but is not the equivalent to you.”

Character Able Earth Voice Like You

Author:Billy Collins

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me ... Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful... that's what matters to me.”

“Some difficulty is warranted and other difficulty I think is gratuitous. And I think I can tell the difference. There are certainly very difficult poets that I really enjoy reading.”

Thinking I Can Reading Enjoy Difficult Differences Poet Difficulty

Author:Billy Collins

“More often than not in poetry I find difficulty to be gratuitous and show-offy and camouflaging, experimental to a kind of insane degree - a difficulty which really ignores the possibility of having a sensible reader.”

Kind Shows Possibility Reader Degrees Difficulty Insane Sensible

Author:Billy Collins

“Another trouble with poetry - and I'm gonna stop the list at two - is the presence of presumptuousness in poetry, the sense you get in a poem that the poet takes for granted an interest on the reader's part in the poet's autobiographical life, in the poet's memories, problems, difficulties and even minor perceptions.”

Two Problem Interest Memories Trouble Poet Reader Perception Difficulty Lists Granted Minors

Author:Billy Collins

“I try to presume that no one is interested in me. And I think experience bears that out. No one's interested in the experiences of a stranger - let's put it that way. And then you have difficulty combined with presumptuousness, which is the most dire trouble with poetry.”

Thinking Way Trying Trouble Bears Difficulty Stranger

Author:Billy Collins

“The literary world is so full of pretension, and there's such an enormous gap between how seriously poets take themselves and how widely they're ignored by everybody else.”

World Poet Enormous Gaps Ignored Pretension

Author:Billy Collins

“Particularly when I thought of myself as a Wallace Stevens acolyte, I wrote very difficult poetry and I was really guilty of not knowing what I was talking about. I was going for a kind of clever verbal effect. I was trying to sound linguistically or verbally interesting. I had a sense, I guess, from just reading a lot of poetry of how a poem would start and how it would end but really I didn't know what I was doing. It had very little connection to my life.”

Knows Trying Kind Littles Ends Reading Difficult Sound Interesting Talking Knowing Effects Connections Clever Guilty Not Knowing

Author:Billy Collins

“When I wrote I took on the role of the despondent and difficult to understand person. Whereas in life, I was easy to understand, to the point of being simple-minded maybe.”

Persons Easy Difficult Simple Roles Despondent

Author:Billy Collins