Dear Billy Collins,

I don't remember the exact moment I met you. It must have been on some dark wood shelf of Barnes and Noble where I was magnetized by The Art of Drowning. I can see myself cross-legged on the rough carpet, skimming through pages, not just in love with the words themselves but with the white space that glares up from an un-owned book. Although I don't remember this moment, I know myself well enough to wager why I would've chosen yours over the others: the title. The title because of its violent thrashing, its implied process of perfection, and the way the cover's pastel yellow hue mutes the devastation of death.

Although I don't remember first seeing you, I do remember the exact moment I fell in love with you. I was in high school and on a trip with my family. Even though my dad doesn't fish, he impulsively decided to drag my mom, my sister, and me to a marsh, where he sat for hours waiting with no success. Held captive, I set up a lawn chair on sturdy ground and read your book from cover to cover. The grass on the shore of the marsh swayed tall and my shoulders burned red while I envisioned the embered-end of a cigarette like a train in progress.

This moment was not just the first time I remember us together, but the first time I discovered a poetry built on simplicity. Until then, I had been spoon-fed only scholarly verse like Shakespeare or Solomon's "Song of Songs." I didn't know people wrote without rigid form in their own colloquial voice; I didn't know, until then, how poetry punches the gut.

Since, I've learned to drive, live on my own, and pay my bills. I graduated high school, college, voted more than once, and moved across the country. Not only that, I don't write with clunky, forced rhymes anymore and poetry isn't just an outlet to vent. Since then, I've gone through many phases—Sharon Olds, James Galvin, Marie Howe—and I've written a lot of poems. I remembered you as a poet of my past, a gateway into my addiction.

But in the bookstore recently, I experienced the same dark wood shelves and rough carpet, the same kind of skimming. As I went through many other books, I saw yours, Horoscopes for the Dead, and I believed myself to be over you. Yet, I lifted yours off the shelf, cracked open the spine, and started from the beginning. In that first poem "Grave," you pulled me deeper than the other poetry books had that day, and without realizing, I wasn't skimming but hanging on the ledge of each line, once again enthralled by your clipped language. Although most of the lines function as complete phrases, your line breaks surprisingly elicit a great deal of tension. Other poets, like Tim Seibles, use line breaks to challenge the reader's understanding of the previous line—the poetic equivalent of flips and spins—so the reader continually feels off-center. But you don't need acrobatics. Instead, you establish tension by returning to poetic basics: the line versus the sentence. You also create strength in sparseness, leaving no excess behind. And finally, you place rather serious content into a molded shape of whimsy. In "My Unborn Children," you speculate on that which never had a chance to exist, these unborn children that "never made the lacrosse team." You are philosophical and funny, spry and challenging. You aren't wilted with tragedy nor do you dismiss the contemplative.

Billy Collins, you are more than just a poet of the people but a reminder of the power verse has in its most clean form. You are not just a gateway; you are an architect of seemingly simple but elaborate structures. Thank you for reminding me that the intricacies of craft do not always need to be obvious to create emotionally impactful poetry.

Sincerely,

Trisina Dickerson