Billy Collins is the former Poet Laureate for the United States of America (2001 to 2003), and you can find some of his more popular poems in Sailing Alone Around the Room (2001).
You are not in the corner to be punished. This is where the beauty is hiding.
HHello again, how good to have you back.
The poem in this issue of Poetry Corner is an original from Billy Collins (b. 1941). It has never been published before.
BILLY COLLINS BIO & HISTORY
William James Collins (born March 22, 1941) is an American poet who served as the Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003.[1] He was a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York, retiring in 2016. Collins was recognized as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library (1992) and selected as the New York State Poet for 2004 through 2006. In 2016, Collins was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.[2] As of 2020, he is a teacher in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton.
Source: Wikipedia
I am on the verge of losing my cool (too late, already gone). My favourite American poet, Billy Collins, has entrusted me with a poem to present to the world for the first time ever in this Winter 2026 issue of Humanist Perspectives Magazine. The poem is beautiful and magical and I must be in a dream to be able to unveil it.
If you did not know, Billy Collins is the former Poet Laureate for the United States of America (2001 to 2003), and you can find some of his more popular poems in Sailing Alone Around the Room (2001), the collection that introduced me to his poetry in the first place.
I don’t know why he gave me the best poem he’s ever written, but it is officially the best, according to me. Entitled, ‘Gravity’, it has edged into first place, beating out my former favourite Billy Collins poem, entitled ‘Marginalia’, well, marginally (oh come on, I had to).
The new poem arrived by post on Christmas Day, 2025, no kidding. I had not checked the mailbox in a few days, and there it was, a crumpled envelope with messy handwriting and a Jimmy Carter stamp. The letter was a response to a shot-in-the-dark, heartfelt request I’d sent him in the mail a month or so earlier, asking for permission to publish a poem or two. What I could not have expected was the gift, on Christmas Day, of an original, never-before-published, Billy Collins poem. The hard copy – a typed beauty on creased paper, wrinkled in transit, is framed along with its envelope, and it sits atop my piano: my very own original Picasso sketch. I hold it in my hands whenever I need a little inspiration. Go ahead. Read it yourself a few times. Sit with it. Take your time to recognize the vibration of a masterpiece.
With no further ado, I give you ‘Gravity’ by Billy Collins:
~Monique Montgomery
trying to walk
her grandfather
is trying
to get up,
also without
falling
down again.
Billy Collins
