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Quote by 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.”

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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“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

“When I began to dare to be clear, because I think clarity is the real risk in poetry because you are exposed. You're out in the open field. You're actually saying things that are comprehensible, and it's easy to criticize something you can understand.”

Thinking Real Easy Clear Risk Fields Dare Clarity Poetry Is Criticize Exposed Open Fields

Author:Billy Collins

“I started moving away from poets like Wallace Stevens and Hart Crane and started reading poets like, again, Karl Shapiro, Howard Nemerov, Philip Larkin, and the British poets who were imported through that important anthology put together by Alvarez - and those would include Thom Gunn and Ted Hughes. And I think these poets gave me assurance that there were other ways to write besides the rather involuted style of high modernism whose high priests were Pound, Eliot and Stevens, and Crane perhaps.”

Thinking Way Writing Important Together Moving Reading Style Poet British Pounds Priests Assurance Modernism Anthology Philip Moving Away Eliot Hart Cranes

Author:Billy Collins

“I felt at some point that I had nothing to lose, and [laughs] maybe I was wrong. I think, you know, there's always these little autobiographical secrets behind things. I think I was really attacking my earlier self, and this kind of pretentious figure.”

Thinking Knows Kind Littles Self Felt Loses Secret Behinds Laughing Figures Attacking Pretentious Nothing To Lose

Author:Billy Collins

“A normal way that the American free market system has worked is that we have a process of unwinding. It's called bankruptcy. It doesn't mean, necessarily, that the industry is eclipsed or that it's gone. Often times, the phoenix rises out of the ashes.”

Way Mean Process Gone Industry Normal Ashes Free Market Phoenix Bankruptcy

Author:Michele Bachmann

“Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”