{"product_id":"9781496840677-conversations-wbilly-collins","title":"Conversations with Billy Collins","description":"\u003cmeta content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\" http-equiv=\"Content-Type\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eOver the course of the twenty-one interviews included in the volume, Billy Collins discusses such topics as discovering his persona; why poetry is so loved by children but often met with anxiety by high school students; and his experience composing a poem to be recited during a joint session of Congress on the first anniversary of 9\/11. Billy Collins \"puts the ‘fun’ back in profundity,\" says poet Alice Fulton. Known for what he has called \"hospitable\" poems, which deftly blend wit and erudition, Collins (b. 1941) is a poet of nearly unprecedented popularity. His work is also critically esteemed and well represented in \u003ci\u003eThe Norton Anthology of American Literature\u003c\/i\u003e. An English professor for five decades, Collins was fifty-seven when his poetry began gathering considerable international attention.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eConversations with Billy Collins\u003c\/i\u003e chronicles the poet’s career beginning with his 1998 interview with Terry Gross on \u003ci\u003eFresh Air\u003c\/i\u003e, which exponentially expanded his readership, three years prior to his being named United States Poet Laureate. Other interviewers range from George Plimpton, founder of the \u003ci\u003eParis Revi\u003c\/i\u003ee\u003ci\u003ew\u003c\/i\u003e, to Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Henry Taylor to a Presbyterian pastor, a physics professor, and a class of AP English Literature students.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Over the course of the twenty-one interviews included in the volume, Collins discusses such topics as discovering his persona, that consistently affable voice that narrates his often wildly imaginative poems; why poetry is so loved by children but often met with anxiety by high school students; and his experience composing a poem to be recited during a joint session of Congress on the first anniversary of 9\/11, a tragedy that occurred during his tenure as poet laureate. He also explores his love of jazz, his distaste for gratuitously difficult poetry and autobiographical poems, and his beguiling invention of a mock poetic form: the paradelle. Irreverent, incisive, and deeply life-affirming—like his twelve volumes of poetry—these interviews, gathered for the first time in one volume, will edify and entertain readers in the way his sold-out readings have done for the past quarter century.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Rarewaves","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40827813101665,"sku":"9781496840677","price":19.43,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0092\/7504\/8033\/products\/stand_7723881_jpg.jpg?v=1706688168","url":"https:\/\/www.rarewaves.com\/products\/9781496840677-conversations-wbilly-collins","provider":"Rarewaves.com","version":"1.0","type":"link"}