The Apple that Astonished Paris Quotes

“Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.”
― Billy Collins, The Apple that Astonished Paris

“all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.”
― Billy Collins, The Apple that Astonished Paris

“You trip over a word while carrying
a tray of vocabulary out to the pool
only to discover that broken glass
is a good topic.”
― Billy Collins, The Apple that Astonished Paris

“a long time ago when cataclysms were common
as sneezes and land masses slid
around the globe looking for places
to settle down and become continents,
someone introduced us at a party.”
― Billy Collins, The Apple that Astonished Paris

“These days every morning begins like a joke
you think you have heard before,
but there is no one telling it
whom you can stop.

One day it's about a cow who walks into a bar,
then about a man with a big nose on his honeymoon,
then about a kangaroo who walks into a bar.
Each one takes up an entire day.

The sun looks like a prank Nathanael West
is pulling on the world; on the drive to work
cars are swinging comically from lane to lane.
The houses and lawns belong in cartoons.

The hours collapse into one another's arms.
The stories arc over noon and descend
like slow ferris wheels into the haze of evening.
You wish you could stop listening and get serious.

Trouble is you cannot remember the punch line
which never arrives till very late at night,
just as you are reaching for the bedside lamp,
just before you begin laughing in the dark.”
― Billy Collins, The Apple that Astonished Paris

“After counting all the sheep in the world
I enumerate the wildebeests, snails,
camels, skylarks, etc.,

then I add up all the zoos and aquariums,
country by country.

By early light I am asleep
in a nightmare about drowning in the Flood,”
― Billy Collins, The Apple that Astonished Paris

“I can see one of them clearly now, walking
along with a newspaper tucked under his arm.
he has cut himself shaving and a bit of tissue
with a circle of blood is stuck to his cheek,”
― Billy Collins, The Apple that Astonished Paris

“There are easier ways of making sense,
the connoisseurship of gesture, for example.
You hold a girl's face in your hands like a vase.
You lift a gun from the glove compartment
and toss it out the window into the desert heat.”
― Billy Collins, The Apple that Astonished Paris

“The fly lands on the swatter.
The movie runs backwards
and catches fire in the projector.
This species apes us well
by talking only about itself”
― Billy Collins, The Apple that Astonished Paris

“When i believe in everything, I could not see
the actors semicircled around a studio microphone
flipping the pages of scripts in unison.
I only heard the voices, resonant, electric, adult,
accusing each other of murder.”
― Billy Collins, The Apple that Astonished Paris

“though they know in their adult hearts,
even as they threaten to banish Timmy to bed
for his appalling behavior,
that their bosses are Big Fatty Stupids,
their wives are Dopey Dopeheads
and that they themselves are Mr. Sillypants.”
― Billy Collins, The Apple that Astonished Paris