Billy Collins Poems - Poem Analysis (2024)

Billy Collins’ piece from ‘Questions about Angels’ humorously explores diverse religious views of the afterlife, from animal reincarnation to deity encounters.

This piece is one of Billy Collin's best works and was first published in Poetry magazine and then later included in Billy Collins’ collection 'Questions about Angels,' in 1991. This poem is about the afterlife. Specifically, everyone’s individual conceptions of what the afterlife is. Using humor, Collins confronts the topic of death by lightheartedly describing the various ways religions depict death. Such as “squeezing into the bodies of animals” and being inspected by a female god in her “forties with short wiry hair”.

While you are preparing for sleep, brushing your teeth,

or riffling through a magazine in bed,

the dead of the day are setting out on their journey.

Billy Collins’ ‘Aristotle’ is a poetic tribute in three sections, each vividly depicting life’s stages: beginning, middle, and end.

'Aristotle' is separated into three sections, reflecting the philosopher Aristotle's poetic contributions. Each part is filled with imagery depicting life's stages. The "beginning" has "climbers studying a map" and "you" who "not yet learned to crawl". The "middle" shows "Cities...sprouted up along the rivers" and "the thick of things". The "end" features images like "Sylvia Plath in the kitchen" and "the empty wheelchair"

This is the beginning.

Almost anything can happen.

This is where you find

the creation of light, a fish wriggling onto land,

In the poem, ‘The Revenant’, Billy Collins channels the spirit of a deceased dog and subverts the accepted relationship of man and his best friend.

Within this poem, the speaker discusses animal/human relationships and humanity’s perceived dominance. Specifically, the speaker discusses, with humor, the revelations he experiences when his dog comes back from the grave. The animal returns to surprise the speaker by telling him that he never liked him in the first place. By the end of the poem the speaker concludes that animals have an inherent worth that is all their own, making the act of buying and owning living creatures absurd.

I am the dog you put to sleep,

as you like to call the needle of oblivion,

See Also

Bill Collins, Australia’s Beloved ‘Mr. Movies,’ Dies at 84Billy Collins | Poetry FoundationBilly Collins | Biography, Books, Poetry, & Facts

come back to tell you this simple thing:

I never liked you--not one bit.

Inspired by John James Audubon’s ‘Birds of America,’ this poem reflects on the disconnect between humanity and nature, as imagined through Audubon’s perspective.

'Birds of America' is considered a masterpiece of the natural world, printed between 1827 and 1838. The references to Audubon continue in the second half of the poem as the speaker relays the imagined words of the naturalist. He notes the duck pictured in the book and relates it to how “strange” or separate, humankind is from the earth today.

Early this morning

in a rumpled bed,

listening to birdsong

through the propped-open windows,

‘Introduction to Poetry’ by Billy Collins is a beautiful poem that speaks about the nature of poetry. The poet considers how poetry should be appreciated and comprehended.

In this poem, the speaker, who is more than likely the poet, discusses the ways that his past and present students understand poetry. He also expresses the frustrations and joys of his everyday job and wishes that everyone could read poetry without obsessively trying to find one specific meaning behind the text. This piece is especially interesting when one considers that Billy Collins himself is a professor and therefore would have very up-to-date experiences, with a spectrum of students.

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

‘Afternoon with Irish Cows’ describes one speaker’s presumptions about the interior lives of cows and the power that sound has over human understanding.

'Afternoon with Irish Cows' delves into the speaker's perceptions of cows' existence. He observes a cow field from his house, noting their constant presence, occasional interactions, and their mysterious disappearances and returns. The poem reflects on the seemingly mundane life of cows, their patience, and the speaker's initial view of them as simple beings. As the poem progresses, an event leads the speaker to a newfound understanding, seeing the cows as more than just mindless creatures, prompting a reevaluation of their essence.

There were a few dozen who occupied the field

across the road from where we lived,

stepping all day from tuft to tuft,

their big heads down in the soft grass,

Billy Collins’ ‘The Art of Drowning’ humorously explores the moments before death and the cliché of life flashing before one’s eyes.

‘The Art of Drowning’ is about the brief moments before death in which one person’s life is said to flash before their eyes. The speaker admits his doubts about this superstition and wonders how it all “got started”. As is common within his work, Billy Collins uses humor to address the subject, suggesting that one’s life would be better remembered through “an essay” or “a slide presentation”.

I wonder how it all got started, this business

about seeing your life flash before your eyes

while you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence,

could startle time into such compression, crushing

This poem reflects on the intimate connection between writing, smoking, and music, ending with the evocative image of a face illuminated by words.

The piece starts with the speaker recounting his history with cigarettes, highlighting those smoked during writing as most memorable. It describes the ritual of writing, smoking, and listening to music, culminating in the striking image of the 'headlamp of [his] face' focused on the words. The poignant beauty of this ritual is contrasted with the speaker's decision to quit smoking, adding an emotional layer to the loss of this cherished experience.

There are many that I miss

having sent my last one out a car window

sparking along the road one night, years ago.

Billy Collins’ satirical poem examines poetry in everyday life, using the metaphor of a postcard as a poem on vacation.

This satirical poem looks at how poetry is used. This poem shows how it appears in the most mundane of places. He is taking a look at “the picture postcard”. It is "a poem on vacation". The speaker examines the act of writing a postcard. The writer puts down words on "the back of a waterfall or lake, / adding to the view a caption…" In the end, the postcard is a "compression of what we feel," and that is poetry itself.

We do not speak like Petrarch or wear a hat like Spenser

and it is not fourteen lines

like furrows in a small, carefully plowed field

Billy Collins’ ‘The Breather’ uses a horror movie metaphor, echoing ‘When A Stranger Calls’ to convey a revelation about love coming from within.

In 'The Breather,' Collins employs the famous line from 'When A Stranger Calls' — the "call is coming from inside the house" to depict a revelation about love. The speaker realizes, somewhat painfully, that the love and desire he feels are emanating from within himself: "All that sweetness, the love and desire—it’s just been me dialing myself." This insight leads to the understanding that in the metaphor of love's communication, he alone is at both ends of the line.

Just as in the horror movies

when someone discovers that the phone calls

are coming from inside the house

In ‘Questions About Angels,’ the speaker wonders why people are not more imaginative or curious in their questions about metaphysical beings. He interrogates religious tradition by envisioning angels in a variety of forms, the last being a single dancer in a jazz bar, whose beautiful form inspires spirituality in the speaker.

As the title of his breakout collection, 'Questions About Angels' is an excellent representation of Billy Collins' work. It showcases his gift for whimsical, witty language and his ability to provoke deep thought in the reader with deceptively simple imagery.

Of all the questions you might want to ask

about angels, the only one you ever hear

is how many can dance on the head of a pin.

In ‘Aimless Love,” the speaker finds himself falling love with the precarious beauty of everyday life.

As the title of his 2013 collection, 'Aimless Love' is an excellent example of Collins' particular brand of witty lyricism and his career-long focus on ordinary life. He draws the reader in through images from all areas of life, which is characteristic of his accessible but deceptively simple poetry.

This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,

I fell in love with a wren

and later in the day with a mouse

the cat had dropped under the dining room table.

‘My Number’ by Billy Collins takes a jocular approach to wrangling with the existential anxieties brought on when thinking about death.

This is a poem from Billy Collins that displays all his wit and profundity in one. It balances with humor and irony an intimate introspection about death, one that both makes light of this very universal fear by poking fun at humanity's terror over such an inevitable part of life. Collins' use of personification renders the figure of death into something dually foreboding and oddly personable.

Is Death miles away from this house,

reaching for a widow in Cincinnati

or breathing down the neck of a lost hiker

in British Columbia?

In ‘The History Teacher,’ the titular educator neglects to teach his students about the cold, hard realities of the past in order to protect their innocence from reality.

Trying to protect his students' innocence

he told them the Ice Age was really just

the Chilly Age, a period of a million years

when everyone had to wear sweaters.

‘Dharma’ by Billy Collins is a touching poem about owning a dog, a dog’s life, and how they live better, fuller and freer lives than humans do.

The way the dog trots out the front door

every morning

without a hat or an umbrella,

without any money