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  • [MUSIC PLAYING]

  • You should probably read all your poems out loud.

  • Dogs are very good to read poetry to.

  • Cats, not so much.

  • Fish are good.

  • If you have a goldfish, your first audience before you

  • send your poetry out into the world.

  • [MUSIC PLAYING]

  • Poetry does not need a story.

  • That's not what its function is.

  • Poetry makes a lot of people tense.

  • You speak English, this poem is in English,

  • and yet you have no idea what it means.

  • A lot of poetry begins as a secret and covert activity.

  • So poetry is sort of a diary without the lock, a diary

  • that you want people to read.

  • [MUSIC PLAYING]

  • A poem often has two subjects, the starting subject and then

  • the discovered subject.

  • "I was as sure as a boy could be that this useless, worthless

  • thing I wove out of boredom would

  • be enough to make us even."

  • The poem wants to leave the object

  • and go beyond it into something greater.

  • This is what poets are paid for, I mean, to like look at clouds,

  • watch chipmunks.

  • Someone has to keep an eye on these things.

  • I like to make a real mess.

  • I like to doodle, cross things out.

  • I try to write a good line, and then

  • another good line, and another good line.

  • But no one's a good line machine,

  • so there's a lot of staring involved.

  • Poetry provides us with a history of the human heart.

  • If you trace it back to the oldest poems we can find,

  • the emotions are the same.

  • Underneath it all, we're all after the same thing.

  • When you read something back that it just

  • has your mark on it, no one else could

  • have written that but you.

  • This voice is just yours, and yours alone.

  • I'm Billy Collins, and this is my MasterClass.

  • [MUSIC PLAYING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

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