Welcome back Billy Collins.....

After watching the video of Billy Collins read his poem, it changed my outlook on poetry for a short amount of time. I personally do not like poetry at all, but his poem did appeal to me greatly. This is only because it made a mockery of what love poems stood for and completely made a sham out of them. Honestly when we first watched the video of him for the first time in class together, it took me a few minutes to realize exactly what he was doing, but once I did realize it, I greatly enjoyed the poem. He was able to pick a part aspects of love poems and turn them into nonsense. He used all of the symbolism against itself in a way. By doing this he showed people love poems in a new light. Billy Collins was able to expose love poems for what they truly are, immense amounts of cheesy symbolism. I do feel that by reading the poem to people it had a greater impact on them. If I had sat down to read this poem I probably would have felt as though it was cheesy just like most love poems, but the way that he read it made it come through to me. It was the slightly sarcastic tone in his voice and also his very relaxed almost not caring attitude when reading it that showed people right out there that it's intent was indeed to make fun of love poems. Billy Collins' whole feel for the this poem was even conveyed through reading it. Even though it was his poem, he wanted the audience to laugh, that was how it seemed he measured his success for this poem. If the audience had been silent and emotional about how beautiful the symbolism was in the text, then it would have been a failure on the part of Billy Collins because he would have simply helped out every other poet who writes the junk that he was making fun of. He conveyed his attitude perfectly and had a strong sense of sarcasm in his voice which made it come across to the audience perfectly. By having Billy Collins, one of the greatest poets of our time, turn love poems into a sham, shows me that there is still some hope left in poetry and that we have not turned the english language into the terrible one that George Orwell feared it had become. Also, on a side note, he was not writing for the university at all in this poem, this was for himself and the public. Good job Billy Collins, you've made me not hate poetry as much an more.