Here’s a great short interview with Billy Collins, with some of the big questions in life and poetry. Might as well ask Billy Collins for the answers, I say!
Q: I wanted to ask you about something else that a critic has said about your work, that your poetry “helps us feel the mystery of being alive.” Is that part of what you’re trying to accomplish?
A: I don’t want to sound too unintentional about all this. I do sort of try to write one poem at a time. But I try to make the poem a kind of present experience for the reader. I don’t want the poem to sound like a recollection of something that happened a long time ago that I just wound up writing about.
I think many of the poems have expressed this theme of a gratitude about being alive that is the result of paying attention. Often a poem will begin with a very clear observation of something in nature. Right now, I’m looking at the garbageman picking up the garbage and throwing it into the truck and there he is. You know, if you notice what’s going on around you intently, that should lead to appreciation of the fact that you are actually here, that you’re actually here to experience it. One of the deepest themes of poetry, and I’m echoing it, is just a gratitude for having experience. For being an experiencer.
