Poet keeps his works accessible

At 64, Billy Collins is on top of his game. He is quite possibly the most popular poet writing today — but he is hanging onto humility for dear life.

"Sales of my books continue to be a surprise," Collins said by phone from his home in Westchester, N.Y. "But if you start believing in your own persona, you're doomed.

"I tend to detach myself from that and don't quite believe it's happening. It's good for my self-esteem. But I have a wife, Diane, who is professionally trained to deflate the male ego. She's an architect. We have this little competition — I tell her I write poems that will still be read when her buildings have fallen down."

The often repeated reason for Collins' success is that his poetry is accessible — meaning that the average reader can enjoy it and understand it without a professor poised over his shoulder. Collins believes there is "a movement gradually moving away from 'the school of incomprehensibility.' Dozens of poets are writing approachable poetry that is reader-friendly — and readers are starting to reclaim poetry they think should not be kidnapped and held hostage by other poets."

Writing approachable poetry is nothing Collins set out to do. He just produces the best poetry he can.

"I've read some very simple-minded poems, but once you get inside them there's not very much going on. They're flat poems.

"On the other hand, other poems have a surface clarity, and when you gain entrance to the poem, then all sorts of imaginative things happen and it becomes more challenging as it goes along. For me, accessibility means I've gotten the reader into the poem."

The other question for every poet is how long will their poetry continue to be read? "I've found my way into a number of anthologies, so I have a place in the classroom for a while. That's important to me — it's good to get poetry in the hands of young people. But the view of posterity is something that is incalculable.

"Walt Whitman is a good example of the opposite. His poetry speaks to the future. He felt assured that his work would last for posterity, that he would be read hundreds of years from when he wrote — and he is."

For anyone to be able to write poetry, in Collins' opinion, he or she "should have a playful interest in language. It's more important than having something to say. At an early age, you need to be interested in playing with words. A person who spends time with the dictionary would be a good potential poet."