“The poem is not, as someone put it, deflective of entry. But the real question is, 'What happens to the reader once he or she gets inside the poem?' That's the real question for me, is getting the reader into the poem and then taking the reader somewhere, because I think of poetry as a kind of form of travel writing.”

American poet, Poet Laureate of the United States

Billy Collins is an American poet who served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He was a distinguished professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York and retired in 2016. He was named a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library in 1992 and served as New York State Poet from 2004 to 2006. In 2016, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He also taught in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton.