It’s an important social duty to spread the word of English to people whose livelihoods depend on knowing the language. Billy Collins Read Quote
I’m all for poetry catching up with technology, and just as there are iTunes, I think we should have iPoems. I mean, people should be able to walk around with their earbuds in and listening to poems on their iPod. Billy Collins Read Quote
Poems are perfect for something to listen to while you’re walking around because they don’t take very long. Billy Collins Read Quote
I did try to write stories in college because I was interested in writing, and I was interested in the sound of language, but I was just no good at narrative and at fiction. Billy Collins Read Quote
When I discovered the lyric poem, that advanced not by narrative steps but by blocks and layers of imagery, I said, ‘Gee, I probably could do that. So let me try that.’ Billy Collins Read Quote
In the long revolt against inherited forms that has by now become the narrative of 20th-century poetry in English, no poet was more flamboyant or more recognizable in his iconoclasm than Cummings. Billy Collins Read Quote
Some honor Cummings as the granddaddy of all American innovators in poetry and ascribe to him a diverse progeny that includes virtually any poet who considers the page a field and allows silence to be part of poetry’s expressiveness. Billy Collins Read Quote
Cummings’ career as a writer – and a painter – was as wobbly as his love life. He tried his hand at playwriting, satirical essays, and even a dance scenario for Lincoln Kirsten. Billy Collins Read Quote
The life of Edward Estlin Cummings began with a childhood in Cambridge, Mass., that he described as happy, but he struggled in both his artistic and romantic exploits against the piousness of his father, an esteemed Harvard professor. Billy Collins Read Quote
The whole world of publishing is moving to electronic, but when you put a poem on a screen and you increase the type size, the shape of a poem changes. Billy Collins Read Quote
