"Introduction to Poetry"

What an odd poem to end our semester of poetry studies with, don't you think?  Surely, I should have begun with "Introduction to Poetry," not ended with it.

But I think it really encapsulates all the things we've been mulling over and discussing and illustrating.  So we'll end with it.  You can read it here.

Discussion Questions:

1.  Which of these activities in this poem do you feel you've kind of participated in this semester?

2.  What is Collins saying about people who analyze or criticize poetry?

"Nostalgia"

Have you ever felt nostalgic for a time and place you've never experienced?  That happens to me fairly often, even though that doesn't actually quite make sense.  Billy Collins wrote a whole poem about that, which you can read here.

Discussion Questions:

1.  What feelings does this poem evoke for you?

2.  What word choices do you find especially interesting?

"Snow Day"

It's winter.  I want snow.  I love snow!  You might hate snow, but if you do, too bad -- you have to read a poem about it anyway.  You can read "Snow Day" right here.

Discussion Questions:

1.  What is the narrator's attitude toward snow?  How do you know?

2.  What is the message/point of this poem?

"Fishing on the Susquehanna in July"

This poem isn't about fishing.  You can read it here.

Discussion Questions:

1.  What is this poem actually about, do you think?

2.  What are some poetic devices you notice in this poem?

Introducing Billy Collins

Billy Collins
(1941--)

At last!  A poet who is still alive!

Billy Collins grew up in NYC.  He became a professor of English as a college in the Bronx, and was named Poet Laureate of the USA in 2001, a position he held until 2003.  He was the Poet Laureate of New York State from 2004 to 2006.  He's read poetry at official functions at the White House three times, and he went to Russia in 2014 as a "cultural emissary."  He's won lots of prizes for his poetry.  He's been married twice.

His poetry reminds me a lot of Carl Sandburg's and Robert Frost's -- very conversational, focused on small parts of ordinary life, lots of snapshot-like poems.  If this intro post seems really short, maybe that's because Billy Collins has lived the kind of fairly ordinary life that his poems talk about!