WEBVTT

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[APPLAUSE]

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You're rabid.

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I've had my shots.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I think this part will go
better if you close your eyes.

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All of you.

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Close your eyes and imagine you
are on a subway in New York.

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It's very late at night.

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A man weaves his
way down the aisle

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and stops in front of you.

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He's obviously been celebrating
and is on his way home.

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He spots a poem displayed on a
poster frame above your head.

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And to this carload of captive
passengers, he begins to read.

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"The fox you lug over your
shoulder in a dark sack

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has cut a hole with
a knife and escaped.

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The sudden lightness
makes you think

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you are stronger as you walk
back to your small cottage

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through a forest that
covers the world."

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That man on that subway
car was Galway Kinnell.

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And the poem displayed
on that subway

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was "Hunger" by Billy Collins.

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Not since Robert
Frost has a poet

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managed to receive so much
critical acclaim and at

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the same time become so popular.

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And of the two,
Frost and Collins,

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I can tell you Billy has
the better disposition.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Billy lives in
New York, where he

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is a professor of
English at Lehman College

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and a visiting
writer at Columbia.

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For those of you who
have never seen Billy,

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he's older than
his name implies.

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His father's name was Bill,
and William was already

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taken by the pre-romantic
poet, William Collins.

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So the name Billy stuck.

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He admits that keeping the
name worked in his favor,

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explaining, "When I
started sending poems out,

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people thought I
was 11 years old.

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[LAUGHTER]

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A child prodigy.

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And that this was
pretty good stuff.

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They published me
for that reason."

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Yeah, sure.

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He has seven
collections of poetry,

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and their titles give you some
idea of how his mind works.

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For instance, The Art
of Drowning, Taking Off

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Emily Dickinson's Clothes.

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And this fall, Random
House will be releasing

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Sailing Alone Around the Room.

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Billy's poems have been
anthologized and published

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in periodicals such as The
American Scholar, Poetry,

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The New Yorker, Paris Review.

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His work has been featured in
the Year's Best American Poetry

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four times, including 2000.

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He is a Guggenheim fellow
and a New York Public Library

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literary lion--

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not the two outside.

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Wise and funny at the
same time, his poetry

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is astonishing,
heartbreaking, and brilliant.

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Praise for Billy is easy to find
and comes from every quarter.

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Edward Hirsch in his book How
to Read a Poem and Fall in Love

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with Poetry, writes,
"Billy Collins

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is an American original.

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A metaphysical poet with
a funny bone and a sly,

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questioning intelligence.

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His poems bump up against
the deepest human mysteries."

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And Jared Smith, writing
in the Irish Times said,

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"The weight of the
world in his poems

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is carried by a playful humor,
reminiscent of Elizabeth

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Bishop and a vigor that
recalls Robert Duncan."

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The first time I
saw Billy Collins,

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he was eating corn flakes
in a campus cafeteria.

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With a promise I made
to wash the blackboards

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and organize the field
trips, I fast-talked my way

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into a nonexistent
job as his assistant

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for a workshop he was
conducting in Galway.

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Ireland considers
him a native son.

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In fact, his photograph hangs
in the famous Kennys Bookshop

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between James Joyce
and Seamus Heaney.

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I once asked Billy
what would he have

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done if he'd not been a poet.

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And his immediate answer
was a jazz musician.

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But a jazz man he already is,
with his rich improvisations

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and unexpected riffs on
subjects ranging from Aristotle

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to Irish cows, three blind mice
to shoveling snow with Buddha.

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Annie Proulx said it.

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"I am fiercely glad that
Billy Collins is ours."

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And would you welcome,
please, Mr. Billy Collins.

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[APPLAUSE]

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