Billy Collins

I'm a great believer in poetry out of the classroom, in public places, on subways, trains, on cocktail napkins. I'd rather have my poems on the subway than around the seminar table at an MFA program.

It seems only yesterday I used to believethere was nothing under my skin but light.If you cut me I could shine.But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,I skin my knees. I bleed.

And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.

I don't think anybody reads a book of poetry front to back. Editors and reviewers only. I don't think anybody else does.