I think what gets a poem going is an initiating line. Sometimes a first line will occur, and it goes nowhere; but other times - and this, I think, is a sense you develop - I can tell that the line wants to continue.
Billy CollinsRead
Attempts to put my poems to music have had disastrous results in all cases. And the poem, if it's written with the ear, already has been set to its own verbal music as it was composed.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Billy Collins emphasizes that poetry is inherently musical in nature and attempts to force it into a different musical form often fails.
In this quote, Billy Collins reflects on the intrinsic musicality of poetry, suggesting that when a poem is crafted with a careful consideration of sound and rhythm, it possesses its own unique melody. He implies that efforts to set poetry to music can often lead to unsatisfactory results because the essence of the poem's music is already present in its original form, highlighting the deep connection between poetry and auditory experience.
Themes
PoetryMusicArtCreativitySound
In practice
Example use cases
During a poetry reading to highlight the musicality of verse.
More from Billy Collins
All quotes →People think of poetry as a school subject... Poetry is very frustrating to students because they don't have a taste for ambiguity, for one thing. That gives them a poetry hangover.
Billy CollinsRead
To a poet, it's quite ruinous to have a poem distorted, out of shape, or squeezed, shall we say, into this tiny screen. But I'm not sure big digital companies are sensitive to the needs of poets.
Billy CollinsRead
All they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with a rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.
Billy CollinsRead
And the reason I am writing this on the back of a manila envelope now that they have left the train together is to tell you that when she turned to lift the large, delicate cello onto the overhead rack, I saw him looking up at her and what she was doing the way the eyes of saints are painted when they are looking up at God when he is doing something remarkable, something that identifies him as God.
Billy CollinsRead
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 CollinsRead
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