“The trouble with poetry,”
says Billy Collins, 
“is that it encourages the writing of more poetry.
…And along with that, the longing to steal,
to break into the poems of others
with a flashlight and a ski mask.
And what an unmerry band of thieves we are,
cut-purses, common shoplifters,
I thought to myself
as a cold wave swirled around my feet
and the lighthouse moved its megaphone over the sea,
which is an image I stole directly
from Lawrence Ferlinghetti—
to be perfectly honest for a moment—
the bicycling poet of San Francisco
whose little amusement park of a book
I carried in a side pocket of my uniform
up and down the treacherous halls of high school.”

Twice named Poet Laureate of the United States, Billy Collins is a self-depricating Bob Newhart sort of poet, calling his poems “domestic” and “middle class.” But critic John Taylor sees him differently: “Rarely has anyone written poems that appear so transparent on the surface yet become so ambiguous, thought-provoking, or simply wise once the reader has peered into the depths.”