A Talk by Billy Collins, past U.S. Poet Laureate

Thursday evening Tacoma Reads Together featured four panelists discussing Protest Songs. One panelist encouraged audience members to explain about songs that had changed their lives; but they did not try to get the audience to sing. Friday afterno0n in the same room past United States Poet Laureate Billy Collins gave a free talk before he read poems at the Pantages in the evening. It stays on my mind that he talked about how a poem goes in a direction it wants to go itself. He described writing as a conversation he was having with the direction the poem wanted to go, with frequent thoughts about the reader. That he wants to take the reader into another, unfamiliar and unexpected situation. I am familiar with an approach to writing that concerns the response of the reader. It helps to think that a poem goes in a direction it wants to go. Students also go where they want to go, students find their own way. On Monday three writers will discuss The Things They Carried, this year's selection, by Tim O'Brien.