Arts & Entertainment, Writing
Introduction: The Pleasure Poetry Gives Us
Lesson time 03:39 min
Meet your new instructor: Billy Collins, one of the most popular and prolific poets of our time. In your first lesson, Billy introduces the many pleasures of poetry and illuminates how poetry connects you to the history of the human heart.
Students give MasterClass an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars
Topics include: Billy Collins Teaches Reading and Writing Poetry
Teaches Reading and Writing Poetry
In his first-ever online class, former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins teaches you how to find joy, humor, and humanity in reading and writing poetry.
Sign UpPreview
[MUSIC PLAYING] BILLY COLLINS: Of all the things poetry is, I think the most important thing it is, it provides us with a history of the human heart. We have lots of histories, of course. And we have history departments in universities. And we have histories about truces and about boundary disputes, and inventions, and wars. But poetry is really the only history we have of the human heart. And if you trace it back to the oldest poems we can find, at least in Western culture, starting with Catullus and moving up to today, they're all speaking the same language. All these poets are really wrestling with the same things. And they're wrestling with emotions of fear of death or embracing death, gratitude for what God has given them, loneliness, adventure, failure to assert oneself. They're all humans. Dante, Milton, Wordsworth, you see the same stuff in there. The language sounds very different. But underneath it all, we're all after the same thing. I'm Billy Collins. And this is my MasterClass. [MUSIC PLAYING] I wrote a piece some years ago called "Poetry, Pleasure, and the Hedonist Reader" in which I laid out pleasures that poetry gives us. I could mention some of them. There was the pleasure-- I call it the pleasure of the dance, which was the pleasure of the rhythms of the poem and how they modulate and affect your reading of it. The pleasure of sound, some would define poetry as words that mean more and sound better. The pleasure of travel, the pleasure of moving from one place in the poem to a different place, moving from a familiar place to an unfamiliar place, moving from Kansas to Oz. All right? Good metaphor for poems. You start in a very familiar place in Kansas and you end up in some wildly conceptual, unhinged places. And then there was also the pleasure of metaphoric connection, of poets coming up with wild comparisons and the enjoyment of seeing a new synapse kind of opened in your mind between two very unlikely things. The other pleasure was the pleasure of, I call it, the pleasure of companionship that comes from memorization. To memorize a poem is to internalize it. And you take it with you wherever you go. If you hold-- if you hold onto it, memorize it, it becomes a companion. Poetry is about time and especially what I would call the romance of time. And that's just another way of saying carpe diem. The romance of time means we're running out of it. All right? So and that's-- and so much poetry is a call to action-- all right-- and saying, live more. You know, get with it. Get your head out of the screen now, that kind of thing. Plunge in.
About the Instructor
Known for his wit and wisdom, former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins is one of America’s most beloved contemporary poets. In his MasterClass, Billy teaches you to appreciate the emotional pull of poetry. Learn his approach to exploring subjects, incorporating humor, and finding your voice. Discover the profound in the everyday, and let poetry lead you to the unexpected.
Featured MasterClass Instructor
Billy Collins
In his first-ever online class, former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins teaches you how to find joy, humor, and humanity in reading and writing poetry.
Explore the Class