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BIOGRAPHY He is a graduate of the College Of The Holy Cross and the University Of California, Riverside . Billy Collins is a distinguished professor of English at Lehman College in the Bronx, where he joined the faculty in 1968 and has taught for over thirty years. In addition, he has taught and served as a visiting writer at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York . As U.S. Poet Laureate, Collins read his poem "The Names" {Link without Title} at a special joint session of the United States Congress on September 6 , 2002 , held to Remember The Victims Of The 9/11 Attacks . In 1997, he recorded ''The Best Cigarette'' (ISBN 0-9658873-0-8), a collection of 33 of his poems that would become a bestseller. In 2005, the CD was re-released under a Creative Commons license, allowing free, non-commercial distribution of the recording. He also recorded two of his poems for the audio versions of Garrison Keillor 's collection ''Good Poems'' (2002, ISBN 0-670-03126-7). Over the years, ''. In 2005 Collins was the first annual recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for Humor in Poetry, bestowed by the Poetry Foundation (Poetry Magazine). He has received Fellowship s from the National Endowment For The Arts , the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation in 1993 , and the New York Foundation for the Arts. WORK Although Collins's poetry is often compared to that of Robert Frost , it is marked by a rejection of forms such as the Sonnet , Sestina , and Villanelle . For instance, his poem "Sonnet" begins "All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now", and continues in this vein; the "sonnet" is fourteen lines, but does not rhyme and is not, until the final line, Iambic Pentameter . He invented the poetic form of the Paradelle as a hoax to parody the villanelle, using his mock "Paradelle for Susan"; the paradelle is emblematic of his rejection of formal poetry. The first paradelle anthology, ''The Paradelle'', edited by Theresa M. Welford, was published in January 2006, showing that the inventiveness of Collins, no matter the purpose, serves to inspire other poets. In his work, Collins has also spoken out against obtuse constructions and over-interpretation of poems. Most of Collins's work is clear and understandable to lay readers and occasionally critical of poets writing only for other poets or academics, which is not to say that Collins's work is simplistic or lacking in artistic merit. Collins shares his occasionally-critical outlook of poets who write only for other poets with his successor as poet laureate, American poet Ted Kooser . As poet laureate, Collins published a collection of poems called ''Poetry 180'', a collection of 180 poems (one for each day of the typical school year) that he considers appropriate poetry with which to introduce high schoolers to the form. Collins is in the center of the movement to re-popularize poetry among adolescent readers. Collins believes that exposing high schoolers to clear, meaningful contemporary poetry will whet their appetites for poetry and make them feel as though it is not a creature from another planet which should be avoided at all costs. Collins now has two ''Poetry 180'' collections, the first of which he opens with his own poem "Introduction to Poetry", a poem that encourages enjoyment of poetry and discourages interpretation that would "tie the poem to a chair with rope/ and torture a confession out of it" or join those who "begin beating it with a hose/ to find out what it really means." He suggests that readers "water ski across the surface." {Link without Title} Billy Collins's poetry has often been called accessible. However, Collins does not much like ''accessible,'' a term he says that suggests ramps for "poetically handicapped people." He prefers the word ''hospitable'' for his poetry. Billy Collins believes that a good poem is a poem that starts out by welcoming the reader, as if to introduce itself, and later shifts from simplicity, into something different, and (in some ways) mystical. He calls this type of poetry "travel poetry", referring not to physical travel , but the travel of imagination. CRITICAL RECEPTION While not failing to remark on Collins' unusual popularity, for a poet, among the reading public, many critics have criticized Collins for work they consider facile and simplistic. Writing in also received a great deal of criticism. On the other hand, a number of journals that rarely, if ever, review poetry, have reviewed Collins' work far more favourably. According to Entertainment Weekly , "Billy Collins is a modern-day Robert Frost . In plain language free from pretension, he takes ordinary subjects (summer-camp crafts, time zones), and plunders their insides until the inner mystery pops out." {Link without Title} QUOTATIONS
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