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
I don't think I've ever written a poem whose intention was just to be funny. I've written poems that start out funny and often shift into something more serious.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Poetry often evolves from humor to deeper themes, reflecting the complexity of emotions and experiences.
In this quote, Billy Collins expresses the idea that while humor may be an initial inspiration in his poetry, it often leads to more profound and serious themes. This suggests that art, particularly poetry, is a dynamic medium that can transition from lightheartedness to weighty reflections, capturing the multifaceted nature of human experience.
Themes
PoetryHumorSeriousnessArtEmotion
In practice
Example use cases
During a poetry reading, one might use this quote to illustrate the unexpected depth found in comedic poetry.
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
Similar quotes
Any photograph has multiple meanings: indeed, to see something in the form of a photograph is to encounter a potential object of fascination. The ultimate wisdom of the photographic image is to say: βThere is the surface. Now think β or rather feel, intuit β what is beyond it, what the reality must be like if it looks this way.β Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy
Susan SontagRead
I feel so entirely in my element with a full orchestra; even if my mortal enemies were marshalled before me, I could lead them, master them, surround them, or repulse them.
Robert SchumannRead
The water crumbles on it's way down as my hands and feet push me forward. The world is lightening, taking shape, and turning to color. It feels like it's being painted around me.
Markus ZusakRead
Whoever wants to know something about me - as an artist which alone is significant - they should look attentively at my pictures and there seek to recognise what I am and what I want.
Gustav KlimtRead
A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.
E. M. ForsterRead
To deny women directors, as I suspect is happening in the States, is to deny the feminine vision.
Jane CampionRead