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
The poets who have written the best poems about war seem to be the poets whose countries have experienced an invasion or vicious dictatorships.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that the most profound poetry about war comes from those who have directly experienced its horrors.
Billy Collins emphasizes that poets who have lived through invasions or oppressive regimes often produce the most impactful and poignant works about war. This connection implies that firsthand experience of conflict can profoundly shape a poet's ability to convey the complexities and tragedies of war through their art.
Themes
PoetryWarExperienceInvasionDictatorship
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a discussion about the impact of personal experiences on art.
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
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She left the web, she left the loom, She made three paces through the room, She saw the water-lily bloom, She saw the helmet and the plume, She look'd down to Camelot. Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror crack'd from side to side; "The curse is come upon me," cried The Lady of Shalott.
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If you take a few days to write an outline, you're just making up scenes that you think will work, that you think will be interesting. But as you write it, other ideas occur - better ideas that have to do with what you're writing.
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Write a novel if you must, but think of money as an unlikely accident. Get your reward out of writing it, and try to be content with that.
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