Billy Collins

Billy Collins: An Evening with the U.S. Poet Laureate
I thoroughly enjoyed the poetry reading “Billy Collins: An Evening with the U.S. Poet Laureate” at UCSB. I had never been to a formal poetry reading and approached it with some reservations, especially since I was not very familiar with Collins’ writing. However, I was pleasantly surprised. In fact, I my little sister went with me and enjoyed it so much that she has since purchased a book of Collins’ poetry.
The appeal of Collins’ poetry lies is the combination of accessibility and depth. My sister commented that she was surprised to so easily understand “poetry” (which I put in quotes because of the dramatic way she says it, emphasizing her preconceived notions of the wordy types of things her sister reads in school). In many of Collins’ poems, I was casually following a ...