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INTERVIEWER
Could you go through the genesis of a poem?
COLLINS
There’s a lot of waiting around until something happens. Some poets like David Lehman and William Stafford set out on these very willful programs to write a poem a day. They’re extending what Catullus said about “never a day without a line.” But most poets don’t write a poem a day. For me it’s a very sporadic activity. Until recently, I thought “occasional poetry” meant that you wrote only occasionally. So there’s a lot of waiting, and there’s a kind of vigilance involved. I think what gets a poem going is an initiating line. Sometimes a first line will occur, and it goes nowhere; but other times—and this, I think, is a sense you develop—I can tell that the line wants to continue.
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| Related Links |
- "On Turning Ten"
- Two Poems, Issue No. 145
- Three Poems, Issue No. 134
- The Butterfly Effect, Issue No. 152
- Sartre, Issue No. 159
- Pomework: An Exercise in Occasional Poetry, Issue No. 154
- One Self, Issue No. 165
- On Turning Ten, Issue No. 129
- NYC c. 1957 by Dave Heath, Issue No. 167
- Instructions to the Artist, Issue No. 71
- Going Out for Cigarettes, Issue No. 116
- Freud, Issue No. 170
- Two Poems, Issue No. 72
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