Reading Billy Collins

Reading Billy Collins is like reading T.S. Eliot except the allusions are in your head or in front of you instead of in books. A poet reading Billy Collins is like an auto mechanic reading Richard Brautigan. It’s hard to get mad at Billy Collins, but when you do, your anger is probably already in one of his poems. If Billy Collins is a Confessional poet, I wonder what he’s confessing? That he is in love with clichés and has to tease them into original language? That he’s irritated by established poets and poety and every word he writes is like a pin in a voodoo doll of Wordsworth, Dickenson, Pound, Williams, Plath, Roethke, etc. Some poets make me want to write poems, but Billy Collins makes me want to draw cartoons because the poem has already been written. Billy Collins drinks a cup of tea like Robert Frost searches for a rhyme. If Billy Collins had written the Lord’s Prayer, it might go something like this: Father, you’re in the ground, but I still remember your name, your future is still mine in how I look and act, and you still bring home the bacon, if only metaphorically. Because you forgave me, I forgive people. You didn’t let me fall into your bad habits, so I remain lucky. I really appreciate that, and so will my kids and their kids and so on. Thanks.