Billy Collins on poetry and theft
From “The Trouble With Poetry”:
…mostly poetry fills me
with the urge to write poetry,
to sit in the dark and wait for a little flame
to appear at the tip of my pencil.And along with that, the longing to steal,
to break into the poems of others
with a flashlight and a ski mask.And what an unmerry band of thieves we are,
cut-purses, common shoplifters,
I thought to myself
as a cold wave swirled around my feet
and the lighthouse moved its megaphone over the sea,
which is an image I stole directly
from Lawrence Ferlinghetti —
to be perfectly honest for a moment —Thanks to Bob Fisher for emailing me this.
Filed under: Billy Collins, steal like an artist
I often feel the same way about song exploration.