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
My poems tend to have rhetorical structures; what I mean by that is they tend to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. There tends to be an opening, as if you were reading the opening chapter of a novel. They sound like I'm initiating something, or I'm making a move.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote describes the structured nature of the author's poetry, likening it to a narrative with clear beginnings, middles, and ends.
Billy Collins emphasizes that his poems are constructed with a deliberate rhetorical structure, resembling the narrative flow of a story. By comparing his poetry to the opening chapter of a novel, he highlights the intention behind his work to draw the reader in and create a sense of movement, suggesting that poetry can be both an artistic expression and a form of storytelling.
Themes
PoetryStructureStorytellingRhetoricArt
In practice
Example use cases
In a poetry reading, one might say this quote to convey how their poems invite the audience into a narrative experience.
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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