Dog Show by Billy Collins

by David Edin

Poet Billy Collins (born March 22, 1941) once said, “While the novelist is banging on his typewriter, the poet is watching a fly in the window pane.” Collins grew up in Queens. His mother was a nurse who could recite verse on numerous subjects, and his father was an electrician who used to bring home copies of Poetry Magazine. Young Billy was a voracious reader, tackling Compton’s Encyclopedia at the age of four before moving on to books like Black Beauty, The Yearling, and the Lassie series. His mother read to him often, and, Collins says, “I have a secret theory that people who are addicted to reading are almost trying to re-create the joy, the comfortable joy of being read to as a child by a parent or a friendly uncle or an older sibling. Being read to as a child is one of the great experiences in life.”

Collins is widely considered the most popular poet in America. He never attended a writing program or took writing workshops, though he did meet poet Robert Frost when Frost visited his class at Holy Cross College. The students were shy, though, so Frost spent most of the evening talking to the Jesuits. Collins remembers mostly staring into his soup. 

He published his first poems in the back of Rolling Stone magazine. They paid $35.00 a poem. He didn’t publish his first book until he was 40 years old. He said, “I thought I would be completely content if I was recognized at some later point in my life as a third-rate Wallace Stevens.” 

Billy Collins uses a Uni-Ball Onyx Micropoint pen in 9 x 7 notebooks to draft his poems before typing them out. When he thinks he might have enough for a book, he puts all the pages on the floor and walks on top of them in his stocking feet, trying to figure out the order. He revises his work carefully, he says, because “Revision can grind a good impulse to dust.”

His newest.collection 'Dog Show' features 25 poems about everyone's favorite four legged friend.  He answered a few quick questions about the book for us.

Q:  Tell us a bit about the new book of poems -

Dog show is a collection of 25 poems of mine about dogs in one way or another. Two interesting things about the book Are it features Vivid watercolor portraits of dogs by the artist Pamela Sztybel. Also, the book is dedicated to 85 dogs. Some belong to Pamela and me others or dogs of friends relatives all in all their four columns of names certainly Guinness book material.

I am assuming that you have been the owner of a dog or tow. . . what are their names and any favorite anecdotes you'd like to share?  What poem from the book has gotten the most feedback from leaders thsu far. . . which one do dog owners seen to be connecting to the most?  Why do you think that is?
My last dog was a charming female Australian mix named Jeanine, after the jazz tune by Cannonball Adderley.  The book seems to appeal to a double audience of poetry, readers and dog lovers and it’s doing very well for those reasons. Last night I gave a reading at the Ransom center in Austin, Texas. They ran out of books before the reading started, then went back to the bookstore to get more books and then they ran out of them after the reading.  The stand out poem in the collection is a short poem titled “ A dog on his master.”

A Dog, on his Master by Billy Collins

As young as I look,
I am growing older faster than he,
seven to one
is the ratio they tend to say.

Whatever the number,
I will pass him one day
and take the lead
the way I do on our walks in the woods.

And if this ever manages
to cross his mind,
it would be the sweetest
shadow I have ever cast on snow or grass.

PURCHASE 'Dog Show: POEMS'

Reprinted with permission of the author, courtesy of Penguin Random House

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