Billy Collins — American Poet born on March 22, 1941,

William James "Billy" Collins is an American poet, appointed as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He is a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York and is the Senior Distinguished Fellow of the Winter Park Institute, Florida. Collins was recognized as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library and selected as the New York State Poet for 2004 through 2006. He is a teacher in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton... (wikipedia)

The pen is an instrument of discovery rather than just a recording implement. If you write a letter of resignation or something with an agenda, you're simply using a pen to record what you have thought out.
I don't write for an auditorium full of people. I don't write for the microphone; I write for the page.
People think of poetry as a school subject... Poetry is very frustrating to students because they don't have a taste for ambiguity, for one thing. That gives them a poetry hangover.
The obituaries shot up to the top of my list when I discovered Robert McG. Thomas, the 'Times' obit writer who redesigned its traditional form and added a measure of stylistic elegance.
Cummings' career as a writer - and a painter - was as wobbly as his love life. He tried his hand at playwriting, satirical essays, and even a dance scenario for Lincoln Kirsten.