From The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2010, edited by Lorna Crozier and published by Tightrope Books.

Billy Collins says you can’t have people in your poems.It can only be you and your reader.You think of all the people in your poems:your Aunt Evelyn, your mother, your friends Lindaand Dick and Ross. John Porter.Your mother, your mother. Billy Collins says your job as poetis to give your reader pleasure. You thought giving pleasurewas your job in sex.Your reader’s crotch is the one thing you neverworried about. Billy Collins says sometimes he takes his penisoff when he writes a poem.You wonder what his penis does when it knows its masteris writing. Goes to bars? Appears for Margaret Atwoodas a remote-signature pen?Billy Collins says strangers don’t careabout your thoughts and feelings. You want to put upyour hand, tell himabout the woman behind you: you camean hour early to sit in the front row and discoveredyou’d forgotten your readingglasses; you were so desperate at the prospect of an hourdoing nothing that you turned around and asked a rowof strangers if anyone had extrareading glasses; the woman behind you lent you her brandnew pair. But he’s back on pleasure. He says how you giveyour reader pleasure is form.Dusty old form! Grade ten sticking-to-your-varnished-wooden-seat iambic pentameter! You’re stillmulling that when Roger Rosenblattasks Billy Collins why he didn’t become a jazz musician.Billy Collins says he wishes he had become a jazz musician,he wouldn’t have to be on stageanswering these questions. So much for thategg-over-easy persona of the poems, eh? Now he’s sayingno decent poet ever knowsthe ending of a poem he’s writing. You think sadlyof all those endings you thought of in the shower, even thoughyou know Billy Collins won’t careabout your feelings and you know you shouldn’t usean adverb in a poem. Then Roger Rosenblatt asks Billy Collins:What is the importance of poetry?Billy Collins sits up straight and says, Poetry is optional.That’s right, reader. Billy Collins, former Poet Laureateof the United States of Americais sitting here on stage saying poetry is optional. And youthought people died for lack of what is found there.Wait a minute. Something’s happeningon stage. Billy Collins is fed up. Billy Collins is leaving.Unclipping his wings. They’re black, just so you know,like his suit. Billy Collins has the wingspanof a frigate bird. There he goes—rising, rising, ridingthe currents of institutionalized sublimity. Beating his wayacross the ceiling beneath the tracklighting, brushing the Stars and Stripes aside. He’s off to findhis roving mojo. You sigh and think about going home.You’ll have to rub outall those people in your poems. You’ll have to have a coldshower whenever you feel an ending coming on.You think sadly—okay, adverbially—about your Aunt Evelyn.How muchyou loved her. How proudly she wore her moustacheto church.