The outstanding poet Billy Collins was born on the 22^nd of March 1941in New York city. After he finished high school he went on to be a graduate of the College of the Holy Cross and the University of California, Riverside, and then later on became a professor of English at Lehman College in New York. As a poet he has created books of poems including “The Trouble with Poetry” in 2005, “Nine Horses” in 2002, and many more.

Over many years of writing Poems Billy has won many awards including “Poetry Magazine” awarding him several prizes for the poems they have published for him. The same magazine has also chosen him as “Poet of the Year”. Thirdly Billy Collins was also the first person to receive the now annual Mark Twain Prize for Humour in Poetry.

Over all Billy Collins is an absolutely amazing poet and is a great idol for many winning many awards here and there for various poems that many have known and many have loved.

-Billy Collins

My Thoughts

The only real figurative language that Billy Collins uses in the poem above (Forgetfulness) is the fact that he broke his poem up into stanzas. Stanzas are divisions in a poem sort of like paragraphs in essays. Other than this Billy Collins has sort of ignored figurative language which is fine because he has been writing poems for a long time so he doesn’t really need the structure that Figurative language gives you. Although Billy didn’t really use figurative throughout the poem he did in certain bits, for example in the last stanza of his poem he used repetition with the phrase ‘no wonder’ appearing twice. Basically Billy Collins uses figurative language here and there but he doesn’t use it in every stanza, he only uses it when he needs to.

This Poem that I have chosen by Billy Collins (Forgetfulness) is a terrific poem in many aspects and there aren’t many things I dislike about it. The first thing I must say that I like about it is the fact that it has a very good flow to it, each line relates to the one before it and his lines always roll perfectly into the one after. One other thing that makes Billy’s poems almost perfect is his word choice, each stanza has at least one word you have look at twice and go “wow”. The third thing about Billy Collins’ poems (in general) that I like is that they are a little more literal then most other poems and aren’t so spacey or out there, I mean they are about things that you can relate to a little easier without feeling emotional and such. The Only sort of criticism I would give to Billy Collins (about all his poems but especially this one) is that they never feel finished, after you’re finished reading one you are always left there going, “wait, its’ over already?” Which is something I love and adore when reading books but with poetry its’ like the author couldn’t bother to finish. In conclusion Billy Collins poems all have good things but all have that feel of an un-finished poem.

My Questions

· Why don’t any of your poems seem finished?

· Will you ever write a non literal poem?

· Will you ever write a poem with a really strong emotion?