A native of New York City, Billy Collins was born in 1941 and has lived in New York City since his birth. From the earliest days, Collins talent as a writer was obvious and his ability to express his thoughts appeared while in grade school. Collins went on to study and graduate from The College of the Holy Cross in Worcester Massachusetts and from the University of California, Riverside.

Collins has authored several collections of poetry, including "The Trouble with Poetry ," "Nine Horses," "Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems," "Picnic, Lightning," and "The Art of Drowning." Collins has also been published in numerous mainstream arts magazines including Poetry , American Poetry Review, American Scholar, Harper's, Paris Review, and The New Yorker.

"Questions About Angels" released in 1991 was an Edward Hirsch selection for the National Poetry Series and "The Art of Drowning" was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Collins other list of honors is equally impressive. It includes the Oscar Blumenthal Prize, the Bess Hokin Prize, the Frederick Bock Prize, the Levinson Prize and the Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. Most notably, in 2001, he was formally appointed as the 44th U.S. Poet Laureate, serving in that capacity until 2003.

His poetry has often been described as accessible, a term Collins despises. Accessible suggests a ramp for poetry challenged people, notes Collins, who prefers to have his work described as hospitable. He is also not known for his rhyming schemes - instead he is recognized for witty descriptions and his comedic touch.

Like many of his modern peers, Collins has spent a great deal of his time teaching at various colleges and Universities. He has spent time in Ireland at University College Galway, and has taught at Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence, and for thirty years at Lehman College, City University of New York.

Collins is often compared to Robert Frost, but is better known for having created the poetic form of the paradelle, a hoax to parody the villanelle. Many critics at first failed to grasp the paradelle and its being a parody that mocked those poets who sought to adhere to formal poetry forms at the expense of common sense. The concept actually spawned a paradelle anthology that was published in January 2006.

Forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue
or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall
on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.