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
If you write a letter of resignation or something with an agenda, you're simply using a pen to record what you have thought out. In a poem, the pen is more like a flashlight, a Geiger counter, or one of those metal detectors that people walk around beaches with.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that writing poetry is an exploration of deeper ideas, unlike straightforward communication like a resignation letter.
Billy Collins uses this quote to contrast the nature of writing poetry with that of more mundane forms of writing, such as a resignation letter. In the quote, he illustrates that while a resignation letter serves a specific function and merely records thoughts, poetry allows for creativity and discovery, acting as a 'flashlight' that illuminates unseen truths, a 'Geiger counter' that detects emotions, and a 'metal detector' that uncovers buried meanings. This metaphor emphasizes the transformative and exploratory power of poetic expression.
Themes
PoetryWritingExplorationExpressionCreativity
In practice
Example use cases
During a poetry workshop, I shared this quote to illustrate the depth of creative writing.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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