{"id":142396,"date":"2020-01-29T12:42:39","date_gmt":"2020-01-29T17:42:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=142396"},"modified":"2020-01-29T12:42:39","modified_gmt":"2020-01-29T17:42:39","slug":"the-other-billy-collins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/29\/the-other-billy-collins\/","title":{"rendered":"The\u00a0Other\u00a0Billy Collins"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

William Collins (1721-1759)<\/p><\/div>\n

Let me tell you something. The eighteenth century was just straight up not a good time for poetry. Of course, there are exceptions; we\u2019re talking about a hundred years (or, if you\u2019re in graduate school, we\u2019re talking about 160 years). Still, the principle is essentially sound. 1700\u20131800: bad poetry.<\/p>\n

Well, \u201cbad.\u201d Better say unreadable. Some inventive genius could probably set up a pay schedule where the big eighteenth-century poets get their fair share of huffin\u2019-and-puffin\u2019 adjectives. But adjectives aside, the desire to read<\/em>\u00a0the stuff is small, vanishingly small.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t a bad century for\u00a0prose<\/em>. Swift, Fielding, Sterne, Johnson, Gibbon, Boswell. Or zoom in close: Have you ever looked at Elizabeth Carter\u2019s translation of Epictetus? Or Mary Wortley Montagu\u2019s letters? Anybody today\u2019d be damn proud to be compared to any of those cats. Whereas, if somebody compares your poetry to that of Thomas Gray, you are being made fun of.<\/p>\n

So why in the world do I read eighteenth-century poetry. Am I a pervert? Do I like things that should not be liked? Answer: I\u2019m no different from you, when it comes to taste. The difference between us is I\u2019m interested in escaping my own perspective as to what\u2019s good and bad in poetry. I want to know what in the world those wigged heads saw in Shenstone, Young, Akenside, Lyttleton\u2026<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t care about that. You don\u2019t have a whole lot of time for poetry in the first place, let alone stuff nobody\u2019s read in 150 years. Unless \u2026 maybe you\u2019re a little bit like me, after all? Maybe you\u2019re afraid the poetry that you yourself are writing\u2014though esteemed and popular now\u2014will one day be a prompt for baffled speculation. \u201cWhat in the world did those fapoons in the twenty-first century think poetry was for<\/em>\u00a0anyway?\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Perhaps you\u2019ve done your turn as poet laureate, and your thoughts are turning to the long view. Are you Collins? Are you going\u00a0<\/em>to be Collins?<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

William Collins\u2014\u201cPoor Collins\u201d to his contemporaries. 1721\u201359: dead, completely incapacitated and insane, at thirty-seven. Author of two tiny books: Persian Eclogues<\/em>\u00a0(1742), and\u00a0Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegorical Subjects<\/em> (1746, though dated \u201947). Book #1, written before the poet was twenty; book #2, before he was twenty-five.<\/p>\n

He could read many languages. He went to Oxford. He had a lot of big plans, all his life. He knew some famous people: David Garrick, the actor; James Thomson, the poet. And Dr. Samuel frickin\u2019 Johnson. But Collins never married, and he never got a taste of his coming immortality. Alas, his stuff was not widely read \u2019til years after his death.<\/p>\n

What is his stuff like. Well \u2026 mostly turgid and ucky, allegorical. He loves to get down on his knees and pray to \u2026 Peace. Or Simplicity. Or other abstractions. There are almost no people<\/em>\u00a0in his poems\u2014not even him, usually. The only, only thing a modern reader can get off on is the froo-froo diction\/syntax.<\/p>\n

If you have any kind of taste for lines like\u2014<\/p>\n

With how sad steps, O moon, thou climb\u2019st the skies\u2026
\n(Sidney)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

or<\/p>\n

\u2026that night-wandering, pale, and watery star\u2026
\n(Marlowe)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

or<\/p>\n

Not only through the lenient air this change delicious breathes\u2026
\n(Thomson)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2014then you are medically certain to like at least a little bit of Collins. For example, look at a couple choice bits from probably his most famous poem (\u201cOde to Evening\u201d). Here\u2019s the first line (and then some):<\/p>\n

If aught of oaten stop or pastoral song may hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(By \u201cEve\u201d he means evening, not Adam\u2019s girlfriend. \u201cOaten stop\u201d means, like, a shepherd\u2019s flute or something.)<\/p>\n

Now go a little bit further down in the same poem:<\/p>\n

For when thy folding star arising shows<\/p>\n

His paly circlet, at his warning lamp<\/p>\n

The fragrant Hours, and elves<\/p>\n

Who slept in flowers the day,<\/p>\n

And many a nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge<\/p>\n

And sheds the freshening dew, and, lovelier still,<\/p>\n

The Pensive Pleasures sweet,<\/p>\n

Prepare thy shadowy car.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

C\u2019mon, that\u2019s hot. If Collins\u2019s poems were full to bursting with lines like the above, you could bet at least a few weirdos would read him through, from time to time. But the poems are not really like that\u2014not enough. So.<\/p>\n

Mainly you get a lot of stuff like this classic anthology piece, Collins\u2019s shortest poem, which I give entire:<\/p>\n

Ode, Written in the Beginning of the Year 1746<\/strong><\/p>\n

How sleep the brave, who sink to rest<\/p>\n

By all our country\u2019s wishes blest!<\/p>\n

When Spring, with dewy fingers cold,<\/p>\n

Returns to deck their hallowed mould,<\/p>\n

She there shall dress a sweeter sod<\/p>\n

Than Fancy\u2019s feet have ever trod.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

By fairy hands their knell is rung,<\/p>\n

By forms unseen their dirge is sung;<\/p>\n

There Honour comes, a pilgrim grey,<\/p>\n

To bless the turf that wraps their clay,<\/p>\n

And Freedom shall awhile repair<\/p>\n

To dwell a weeping hermit there!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nothing wrong with that. It\u2019s good. \u201cWraps his clay.\u201d But it\u2019s so emphatically\u00a0normal<\/em>\u2014impersonal, marmoreal (if I\u2019m using that word correctly), austere. Maybe kinda\u00a0Roman<\/em>? I dunno. Anyhow, I\u2019m saying it\u2019s hard to get excited.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s pause and look at a poem by a dead American poet, Karl Shapiro.\u00a0There\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0another reputation upon which the sun has gone down\u2014for reasons that will be obvious in a minute.<\/p>\n

The poem is unusual in that it figures people from northern India as guardians of culture\u2014a respectable enough manner of being in the world, but one with which the poet sees himself as having broken.<\/p>\n

You Call These Poems?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Hyderabad, city of blinding marble palaces,<\/p>\n

White marble university,<\/p>\n

A plaything of the Nazim, I read some poetry<\/p>\n

By William Carlos Williams, American.<\/p>\n

And the educated and the suave Hindus<\/p>\n

And the well-dressed Moslems said,<\/p>\n

\u201cYou call those things poems?<\/p>\n

Are those things poems?\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For years I used to write poems myself<\/p>\n

That pleased the Moslems and Hindus of culture,<\/p>\n

Telling poems in iambic pentameter,<\/p>\n

With a masculine inversion in the second foot,<\/p>\n

Frozen poems with an ice-pick at the core,<\/p>\n

And lots of allusions from other people\u2019s books.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That\u2019s the whole poem. But see, it\u2019s 2020. By this point, we\u2019re all trained to spot the old trick: let the peoples of the East stand for some standard, ambivalence-causing human trait\u2014in this case, canon mongering and the tyrannies of formal poetry. The objection is obvious: ya don\u2019t have to go to Hyderabad to encounter canon mongering. England<\/em>, in the eighteenth century, was, emphatically, Shapiro\u2019s India. England was Song Dynasty China \u2026 was Babylon the Great \u2026 and it still is \u2026 and so are we.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, the thing I\u00a0like<\/em> about Shapiro\u2019s poem is he purposely gives Indians a lot of credit. A frozen poem with an ice pick in the center? That actually sounds pretty cool<\/em>. And indeed it brings us back to Collins\u2014with him you need a little help seeing the ice pick.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Ever heard of Lonsdale\u2014Roger Lonsdale? If you have any investment in eighteenth-century studies, you will have encountered the name. According to Wikipedia, he\u2019s still out there somewhere, chewing bread. Must be in eighties.<\/p>\n

That guy knew more about eighteenth-century poetry than you know about your own life<\/em>. Witness his supremo-supremo edition of Collins, 1969:<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>

That engraving on the cover is Collins, age fourteen, looking like an illustration out of a 19th-century hygiene pamphlet, warning against the dangers of masturbation.<\/p><\/div>\n

In the above book, every page is half poetry, half footnotes. For every single line, Lonsdale shows you a-whence Collins pilfered it. Milton\u2019s \u201cNativity Ode,\u201d Spenser\u2019s\u00a0Fairie Queene<\/i>, Pope\u2019s\u00a0Essay on Man<\/i>. If Collins lifts a construction, Lonsdale spots it, cites it, explains it\u2014nothing gets by him. And<\/em> he did it without computers, and<\/em> he wasn\u2019t even thirty-five when the book came out. I don\u2019t understand how it\u2019s possible for this book to exist.<\/p>\n

I remember well, 2002 or 2003, the wild rumor had just reached me and John Maki at the University of Chicago that Lonsdale was about to release an edition of Johnson\u2019s Lives of the Poets<\/i> in four volumes, from Oxford University Press. Excitement at that level comes but once or twice in a lifetime.<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t understand!\u00a0Lonsdale doing the\u00a0Lives of the Poets<\/i>\u00a0is literally better than the poets themselves coming back to life and explaining their poems. \u2019Cuz they don\u2019t know what\u2019s important; Lonsdale\u00a0does.<\/p>\n

And yet. To read Collins in the \u201969 version, stopping every second like that, is, well, madness. Maybe you have to, once. But if you want to give Collins a fighting chance you need to get a hold of a facsimile of the original\u00a0Odes<\/i>\u00a0and read \u2019em straight off into a voice recorder. Takes forty minutes; I just did it, this week. Then you play it back when you\u2019re doing your copperplate calligraphy. You start to develop preferences\u2026 \u201cOde on the Passions\u201d\u2014overrated. \u201cThe Manners. An Ode\u201d\u2014interesting! And so on.<\/p>\n

*<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking of Johnson, here\u2019s a notorious paragraph from his \u201cLife of Collins\u201d (1781):<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

To what I have formerly said of his writings may be added, that his diction was often harsh, unskilfully laboured, and injudiciously selected. He affected the obsolete when it was not worthy of revival; and he puts his words out of the common order, seeming to think, with some later candidates for fame, that not to write prose is certainly to write poetry. His lines commonly are of slow motion, clogged and impeded with clusters of consonants. As men are often esteemed who cannot be loved, so the poetry of Collins may sometimes extort praise when it gives little pleasure.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n
\n
\n

When Sir Egerton Brydges read that for the first time, as a young man, he shat the bed with rage. Fifty years later he was still so mad he wrote an essay (thirty-one pages in the copy I have), basically saying Johnson had no soul, no feelings, and that Collins compares favorably to virtually every other poet who ever lived, including Aeschylus and Euripides. I\u2019m exaggerating only slightly. The critic really does come off unhinged, reminding me of Walter Bronson\u2019s comment (1898), excusing the ecstasy of one of Collins\u2019s early reviewers: \u201cIf this is not criticism, at least it is rapture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just the same, Johnson\u2019s strictures will seem justified to most modern enquirers. He often felt his contemporaries went too far with the decorations, and he was no fan of far-fetched diction like \u201coaten stop.\u201d In this way, Johnson\u2019s seems like a now-a-go-go mentality; Collins and Egerton seem like fossils. But how can these pre-Romantics seem superannuated, while the Supreme Dictator of Augustan Everything seem like\u00a0us<\/i>??<\/p>\n

Answer: Because we are everybody, and everybody\u00a0is\u00a0<\/i>us. And this is why we must go on reading forbidding poetry.<\/p>\n

We are Hyperboreans: nothing must be forbidden to us.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Anthony Madrid lives in Victoria, Texas. His second book is\u00a0<\/em>Try Never<\/a>. He is a correspondent for the\u00a0<\/em>Daily.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

William Collins\u2014\u201cPoor Collins\u201d to his contemporaries. 1721\u20131759: dead, completely incapacitated and insane, at thirty-seven. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1005,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2157],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-poetry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe\u00a0Other\u00a0Billy Collins by Anthony Madrid<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"January 29, 2020 \u2013 William Collins\u2014\u201cPoor Collins\u201d to his contemporaries. 1721\u20131759: dead, completely incapacitated and insane, at thirty-seven.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/29\/the-other-billy-collins\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The\u00a0Other\u00a0Billy Collins by Anthony Madrid\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"January 29, 2020 \u2013 William Collins\u2014\u201cPoor Collins\u201d to his contemporaries. 1721\u20131759: dead, completely incapacitated and insane, at thirty-seven.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/29\/the-other-billy-collins\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-01-29T17:42:39+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/william-collins.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"700\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"467\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Anthony Madrid\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Anthony Madrid\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"9 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/29\/the-other-billy-collins\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/29\/the-other-billy-collins\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Anthony Madrid\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/ff28732ebcbdac8b865bc16ad5887c2e\"},\"headline\":\"The\u00a0Other\u00a0Billy Collins\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-01-29T17:42:39+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/29\/the-other-billy-collins\/\"},\"wordCount\":1881,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/29\/the-other-billy-collins\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/william-collins.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"On Poetry\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/29\/the-other-billy-collins\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/29\/the-other-billy-collins\/\",\"name\":\"The\u00a0Other\u00a0Billy Collins by Anthony Madrid\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/29\/the-other-billy-collins\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/29\/the-other-billy-collins\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/william-collins.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-01-29T17:42:39+00:00\",\"description\":\"January 29, 2020 \u2013 William Collins\u2014\u201cPoor Collins\u201d to his contemporaries. 1721\u20131759: dead, completely incapacitated and insane, at thirty-seven.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/29\/the-other-billy-collins\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/29\/the-other-billy-collins\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/29\/the-other-billy-collins\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/william-collins.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/william-collins.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/29\/the-other-billy-collins\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The\u00a0Other\u00a0Billy Collins\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/ff28732ebcbdac8b865bc16ad5887c2e\",\"name\":\"Anthony Madrid\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/549efa5a01d55301426f5af7f96efcdad383944e916201d24ebb62c4e26da542?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/549efa5a01d55301426f5af7f96efcdad383944e916201d24ebb62c4e26da542?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Anthony Madrid\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/anthony-madrid\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The\u00a0Other\u00a0Billy Collins by Anthony Madrid","description":"January 29, 2020 \u2013 William Collins\u2014\u201cPoor Collins\u201d to his contemporaries. 1721\u20131759: dead, completely incapacitated and insane, at thirty-seven.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/29\/the-other-billy-collins\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The\u00a0Other\u00a0Billy Collins by Anthony Madrid","og_description":"January 29, 2020 \u2013 William Collins\u2014\u201cPoor Collins\u201d to his contemporaries. 1721\u20131759: dead, completely incapacitated and insane, at thirty-seven.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/29\/the-other-billy-collins\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2020-01-29T17:42:39+00:00","og_image":[{"width":700,"height":467,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/william-collins.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Anthony Madrid","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Anthony Madrid","Est. reading time":"9 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/29\/the-other-billy-collins\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/29\/the-other-billy-collins\/"},"author":{"name":"Anthony Madrid","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/ff28732ebcbdac8b865bc16ad5887c2e"},"headline":"The\u00a0Other\u00a0Billy Collins","datePublished":"2020-01-29T17:42:39+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/29\/the-other-billy-collins\/"},"wordCount":1881,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/29\/the-other-billy-collins\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/william-collins.jpg","articleSection":["On Poetry"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/29\/the-other-billy-collins\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/29\/the-other-billy-collins\/","name":"The\u00a0Other\u00a0Billy Collins by Anthony Madrid","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/29\/the-other-billy-collins\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/29\/the-other-billy-collins\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/william-collins.jpg","datePublished":"2020-01-29T17:42:39+00:00","description":"January 29, 2020 \u2013 William Collins\u2014\u201cPoor Collins\u201d to his contemporaries. 1721\u20131759: dead, completely incapacitated and insane, at thirty-seven.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/29\/the-other-billy-collins\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/29\/the-other-billy-collins\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/29\/the-other-billy-collins\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/william-collins.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/william-collins.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/29\/the-other-billy-collins\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The\u00a0Other\u00a0Billy Collins"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/ff28732ebcbdac8b865bc16ad5887c2e","name":"Anthony Madrid","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/549efa5a01d55301426f5af7f96efcdad383944e916201d24ebb62c4e26da542?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/549efa5a01d55301426f5af7f96efcdad383944e916201d24ebb62c4e26da542?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Anthony Madrid"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/anthony-madrid\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1005"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142396"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":142406,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142396\/revisions\/142406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}