The Poetry of Billy Collins Trivia Quiz

Answer: Where the Sidewalk Ends

"Where the Sidewalk Ends" is a collection of poems by Shel Silverstein. Other collections by Billy Collins include "The Apple that Astonished Paris", "Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes", "Horoscopes for the Dead", and "Aimless Love".

Answer: Winter Syntax

Syntax is a term that refers to the arrangement of words and phrases to create sentences. In this poem, it is used as a metaphor for making sense of the world, and the metaphor is sustained throughout the poem. "Every lake is a vowel," for instance, "every island a noun."

William James (Billy) Collins was born March 22, 1941 in New York City.

Answer: Angels

In "Questions About Angels", the poet bemoans that "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" is the only question you hear about angels. He has quite a few interesting questions of his own, such as "If an angel fell off a cloud, would he leave a hole / in a river and would the hole float along endlessly / filled with the silent letters of every angelic word?"

Answer: The neighbor's dog will not stop barking

This poem, "Another Reason Why I Don't Keep a Gun in the House" is the first in Billy Collins's 2001 collection "Sailing Alone Around the Room". The poem depicts a man whose nerves are frayed by the barking of the neighbor's dog. He tries to drown out the dog with music to no avail: "and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra, his head raised confidently as if Beethoven / had included a part for a barking dog."

Answer: ants

This simile conjures up an image of little black words moving across a page, like ants. But before the writer covers pages, he first must do the following: "From a small vase, sparkling blue, lift / a yellow pencil, the sharpest of the bouquet." And before that, the writer should scrub down his study, because "spotlessness," after all, "is the niece of inspiration."

Answer: The poem

This line comes from "Introduction to Poetry". In this metaphor for tearing apart a poem to find what the poet is trying to say, "They begin beating it with a hose / to find out what it really means."

Billy Collins received his B.A. in English from the College of the Holy Cross and his Ph.D in Romantic Poetry from the University of California, Riverside, where he was influenced by contemporary poets such as Howard Nemerov, Karl Shapiro, and Reed Whittemore. He also considers the beat generation poets to be among his influences.

Answer: double-spacing

"And sometimes one will appear in a windowpane
to watch me lecturing the wallpaper,
quizzing the chandelier, reprimanding the air."

Billy Collins was appointed the U.S. poet laureate two years in a row from 2001 to 2003. The poet laureate is appointed annually by the Librarian of the U.S. Congress and is more formally known as the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. His or her "job" as poet laureate is to raise the public's appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry.

Answer: hari-kari

Billy Collins reflects "and how different I was from the men / of hari-kari for whom it is disgraceful / to end up lying on your back." The poem contrasts the poet's own mundane life with calls to seize the day and make the most of life:

"To drain the cup of life to the dregs
was a piece of irresistible advice,
I averred as I checked someone's dates
in the 'Dictionary of National Biography'..."

Answer: fire

This comes from the poem "Adage" in the collection "Ballistics". These lines have a quality reminiscent of the mystical adages of the 13th century Sufi poet Rumi, who also frequently wrote on the subject of love as being a way of stepping outside of one's self. "Love is reckless, not reason," Rumi wrote, "Having died to self-interest, / she risks everything and asks for nothing..."

Answer: A seesaw

"And I would see to it that the image of a seesaw -
or teeter-totter as it once called -
was added to my family crest,
stitched into that empty patch
just below the broken plow
and above the blindfolded bee."

These verses come from the poem "Passivity" in the collection "Ballistics". The seesaw is representative of the poet's unwillingness to commit to a position: "I arrived at the decision / that I would never make another decision."