Billy Collins

Biography

Billy Collins, the US Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003, is the author of many collections of poetry, including Questions About Angels (Pittsburg, 1999) and Aimless Love (Random House, 2013). His many honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation and the Poetry Foundation’s Mark Twain Award for Humor in Poetry.

See Work

POETRY / Spring 2008

The Great American Poem

By Billy Collins

If this were a novel,
it would begin with a character,
a man alone on a southbound train

POETRY / Winter 2006

August

By Billy Collins

The first one to rise on a Sunday morning,
I enter the white bathroom
trying not to think of Christ or Wallace Stevens.

POETRY / Winter 2006

The Summer Houses

By Billy Collins

All winter long they are occupied only by their vacancy.
The paintings look out from the white walls.
The wicker beds and the wicker chairs are not taken.

POETRY / Spring 1998

Nothing to Write Home About

By Billy Collins

It’s a sunny weekday in May
and I have had a bowl of beef stew
and a cold bottle of beer on the brick patio

POETRY / Spring 1998

Portrait of the Reader With Cereal

By Billy Collins

This morning I sit across from you
at the same small table,
the sun italicizing