Poetry Teaching Guide Featuring Billy Collins

Overview

Developed around a selection of materials from the Billy Collins Papers, the following teaching guide encourages students to consider the creative process of a former Poet Laureate of the United States. The guide is divided into thematic mini-lessons that invite exploration and analysis of poetry and other written works through digitized drafts, notebooks, sketches, clippings, proofs, and professional correspondence. Each mini-lesson introduces a different approach to analyzing poetry before presenting discussion questions, activities, and digitized materials to familiarize students with key concepts. While archival materials from the Billy Collins Papers anchor this teaching guide, these mini-lessons can be adapted to analyses of any poet. See the Additional Resources section at the end of this document to learn more about Billy Collins and access digitized content related to other poets in the Ransom Center’s collections.

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General Learning Objectives

1. Learn to access and navigate the digital collections on the Harry Ransom Center website.
2. Develop well-supported arguments by identifying and interpreting primary source evidence.
3. Analyze a poet’s creative process and consider what strategies they use to evolve an idea into a final work.
4. Perform close readings of poems and assess how form, style, and diction contribute to a poem’s meaning and impact.
5. Learn about the genre of poetry and reflect on what distinguishes poetry from other forms of writing.

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Mini-Lessons

Lesson 1: Poetry Subjects, Themes, & Tones

This lesson invites students to consider a poem’s subject, theme, and tone. For this exercise, think about the subject as the surface level topic or focus of a poem (e.g., love, winter, cooking); the theme as the underlying message or idea of a poem (e.g., power of love to create and destroy; surviving winter as a metaphor for resilience during hardship; exploring identity and familial connection through food preparation); and the tone as the poet’s attitude or feeling toward the subject (e.g., ironic, hopeful, playful, nostalgic). Once students identify a poem’s subject, theme, and tone, they will be better prepared to consider how a poet’s creative process impacts the final work.

Discussion Questions

1. What is the poem’s main subject? In other words, what is the poem literally describing?
2. What theme does the poem explore through the lens of this subject? In other words, what is the central message or idea of the poem?
3. Is the tone of the poem satirical, hopeful, nostalgic, frustrated, curious, or something else? How does the tone reflect the theme?
4. Do you relate to the perspective captured by the poem? Why or why not?
5. Think about how personal experience influences our understanding of poetry. How might readers from other backgrounds or time periods interpret the poem differently?

Activities

1. For a poem of your choosing, underline words or phrases that represent the subjectof the poem and circle words or phrases that hint at the poem’s theme. In small groups, discuss what was underlined and circled and why those parts were chosen.
2. First, identify the tone of one poem by Billy Collins. Second, revise Collins’ poem to evoke a different tone. For example, transform the selected poem from humorous to serious, humble to arrogant, nostalgic to progressive, cynical to optimistic, etc. by editing word choice, punctuation, structure, and/or point of view.
3. To prepare for this activity, download a poem from the Billy Collins Poetry Teaching Guide Digital Collection and redact the title. Share this poem with a small group, whose participants will read the poem and consider its subject and theme. After reading the poem, everyone will craft a title they think evokes the poem’s subject, intent, or meaning. Share these titles and discuss how they compare to the author’s title.

Lesson 2: Analyzing Creative Process

This lesson invites students to analyze a poet’s creative process. For this exercise, think about the creative process as the steps a writer takes to refine an idea into a final work. This may include brainstorming, researching, drafting, revising, editing, and negotiating publication. Archival materials enrich our understanding of the creative process because they capture the intentional choices a poet makes as they write.

Discussion Questions

1. Write a brief description of the primary source.
1. What kind of document is it (e.g., notebook entry, typed poem, email, reused paper)?
2. Does it show signs of wear (e.g., folds, tears, adhesive residue, pin holes, stains)? What do wear marks suggest about how the item was used (e.g., was it carried in a pocket, folded and unfolded, pinned to a wall, placed under a coffee cup)?
3. With what technologies was it made (e.g., handwritten with a pen, typed on a computer, printed by a publisher)?
4. What kinds of additional markings do you see (e.g., drawings, annotations, underlines, strikethroughs, arrows, highlights, circles, undefined marks, sticky notes)?
5. What else stands out to you?
2. Considering the observations you made in the previous question:
1. What strategies is this author using to generate, refine, and convey ideas?
2. What kinds of changes does the author make to the text? Do you find these changes successful? Why or why not?
3. What stage of the creative process does the object reflect (e.g., brainstorming, researching, drafting, editing, publishing)?
3. Think about your own creative process.
1. What tools do you use to brainstorm, draft, and edit?
2. What does it look like when you are working through an idea?
3. What helps you overcome writer’s block?
4. How does this author’s creative process compare to yours? Are you curious to try any of their processing techniques?

Activities

1. Brainstorming: Keep a notebook for a week. Every day record a thought or experience that stood out to you. This could take any expression (e.g., drawing, collage, prose, quote, word list). At the end of the week, write a poem inspired by an entry of your choosing.
2. Editing: Ask a partner to identify a line of text in your poem that needs refinement. Rewrite that line three different ways (e.g., vary word choice, adjust the tone, change the rhythm, incorporate more evocative language). With your partner, discuss which option is most effective and why that option is the best.
3. Critiquing: Choose a Collins poem to critique. Compare a draft of the poem to its final version and consider the strengths and weaknesses of each. How does the meaning, tone, and subject of the poem change from one draft to another? Is there a word, phrase, title, etc. on an earlier draft that you think is more impactful than what was chosen for the final version? Are there aspects of the final version that still need refinement? Write down your thoughts and discuss them with a group.

Lesson 3: What is Poetry?

This lesson invites students to consider poetry as a literary genre. The Oxford English Dictionary defines poetry as “Composition in verse or some comparable patterned arrangement of language in which the expression of feelings and ideas is given intensity by the use of distinctive style and rhythm.” Yet each writer formulates a personal definition of poetry over the course of their lives. Archival materials can capture the development of a poet’s voice, their sense of purpose, and their evolving relationship to writing.

Discussion Questions

1. Review the digitized content linked below and consider Billy Collins’ reflections on the genre of poetry and poetry writing.
1. What metaphors or comparisons does Collins use to describe poetry?
2. What does Collins suggest is the purpose of poetry? In other words, why write poetry? What can it accomplish?
3. In his drafted speech “Game of Poetry”, Collins explains the importance of conspicuous form, hidden form, content, and irony. According to Collins, how can a poet use these elements to write more impactful poetry?
2. Consider the different forms of writing represented in the Billy Collins Poetry Teaching Guide Digital Collection. How do Collins’ poems compare to his speeches, journals, and correspondence?
1. What is the main purpose of each form of writing (e.g., to persuade, inform, teach, express emotions, entertain)?
2. Who might be the intended audience for each text?
3. How does the author’s approach to connecting with the audience change between genres? For example, consider differences in subject matter, tone, word choice, rhythm, voice, style, and structure.

Activities

1. Ask an AI platform, such as ChatGPT, how Billy Collins defines poetry. Compare AI’s response to your reflections for Discussion Question #1. What similarities and differences do you notice between AI’s interpretation and your own?
2. Respond to the prompt: “Poetry is…” You may choose to represent your thoughts in a variety of creative formats such as a poem, short story, collage, drawing, performance, zine, or storyboard.
3. Create “found poetry” using the Ransom Center’s digital collection (see Additional Resources section below). First, read several works by the same poet and identify words, phrases, stanzas, rhythms, and/or rhymes that stand out to you. Rearrange these selections into an original poem. This exercise will help you identify patterns in a poet’s work, recognize what makes language poetic, and understand the intentional choices that shape a poem.

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Additional Resources

Billy Collins

• Billy Collins: An Inventory of His Papers at the Harry Ransom Center
• Billy Collins Poetry Teaching Guide Digital Collection
• Library of Congress: Billy Collins, U.S. Poet Laureate: A Resource Guide

Poet Highlights: Harry Ransom Center Digital Collections

• Baron Alfred Tennyson
• Bouts Rimés Manuscripts by John Tenniel
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• Christina Georgina Rossetti
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti
• Dylan Thomas
• Edgar Alan Poe
• Gerard Manley Hopkins
• Hart Crane
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• John Keats
• Robert Burns
• Sara Teasdale
• Sir Walter Scott
• Thomas Moore
• Vachel Lindsay