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
I don't think I've ever written a poem whose intention was just to be funny. I've written poems that start out funny and often shift into something more serious.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Poetry often evolves from humor to deeper themes, reflecting the complexity of emotions and experiences.
In this quote, Billy Collins expresses the idea that while humor may be an initial inspiration in his poetry, it often leads to more profound and serious themes. This suggests that art, particularly poetry, is a dynamic medium that can transition from lightheartedness to weighty reflections, capturing the multifaceted nature of human experience.
Themes
PoetryHumorSeriousnessArtEmotion
In practice
Example use cases
During a poetry reading, one might use this quote to illustrate the unexpected depth found in comedic poetry.
More from Billy Collins
All quotes βPeople 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
Similar quotes
Writers have to have a knack for listening. I need to be able to hear what is being said to me by the voices I create.
Jeanette WintersonRead
We have no longer an outside and an inside as two separate things. Now the outside may come inside and the inside may and does go outside. They are of each other. Form and function thus become one in design and execution if the nature of materials and method and purpose are all in unison.
Frank Lloyd WrightRead
Into the street the piper stepped, Smiling first a little smile As if he knew what magic slept In his quiet pipe the while. And the piper advanced And the children followed.
Robert BrowningRead
I discovered the fun of genre is... you get to explore your fears, and you get to use the metaphor of the genre - whether it's a giant monster or a... 12-year-old vampire. Whatever it is, you can sink something underneath the surface and make a personal film under the guise of great fun romp.
Matt ReevesRead
Art is the child of nature in whom we trace the features of the mothers face.
Henry Wadsworth LongfellowRead
My characters live inside my head for a long time before I actually start a book about them. Then, they become so real to me I talk about them at the dinner table as if they are real. Some people consider this weird. But my family understands.
Judy BlumeRead