You should probably read all your poems out loud.

Dogs are very good to read poetry to.

Cats, not so much.

Fish are good.

If you have a goldfish, your first audience before you

send your poetry out into the world.

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Poetry does not need a story.

That's not what its function is.

Poetry makes a lot of people tense.

You speak English, this poem is in English,

and yet you have no idea what it means.

A lot of poetry begins as a secret and covert activity.

So poetry is sort of a diary without the lock, a diary

that you want people to read.

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A poem often has two subjects, the starting subject and then

the discovered subject.

"I was as sure as a boy could be that this useless, worthless

thing I wove out of boredom would

be enough to make us even."

The poem wants to leave the object

and go beyond it into something greater.

This is what poets are paid for, I mean, to like look at clouds,

watch chipmunks.

Someone has to keep an eye on these things.

I like to make a real mess.

I like to doodle, cross things out.

I try to write a good line, and then

another good line, and another good line.

But no one's a good line machine,

so there's a lot of staring involved.

Poetry provides us with a history of the human heart.

If you trace it back to the oldest poems we can find,

the emotions are the same.

Underneath it all, we're all after the same thing.

When you read something back that it just

has your mark on it, no one else could

have written that but you.

This voice is just yours, and yours alone.

I'm Billy Collins, and this is my MasterClass.

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