"The name of the author is the first to go," writes Billy Collins in his poem Forgetfulness. But for Collins himself, this line holds little credence.

Perhaps foreshadowing a literary career, Collins, the son of an electrician from Lowell, Mass., was born in 1941 in the same hospital where William Carlos Williams was a pediatrician. He attended parochial schools and the College of the Holy Cross and later earned a PhD in Romantic poetry at UC Riverside. Loyal as the characters within his poems, he has taught at Lehman College since 1968. He resides with his wife, Diane, an architect, in Westchester County.

Although presently the author to nine volumes of poetry, including his latest collection, The Trouble With Poetry: And Other Poems (2005), his literary beginnings were humble. His poems appeared first in obscure journals like Flying Faucet Review and Oink, names he loves to recite.

The US Poet Laureate from 2001-2003, he was subsequently appointed Poet Laureate for the state of New York. "Moving from the position of United States poet laureate to New York State poet laureate might seem like a demotion or a drop in rank to the military-minded," Collins noted. "It might even appear that I am heading toward eventually being crowned laureate of my ZIP Code. But in fact, it is very gratifying to be honored again as a representative of poetry, this time by my native state where I grew up -- more or less -- and continue to live."

ZIP Code laureate or not, the transformative power of his poetry is truly remarkable. On every page, Collins' poems are inhabited with human frailties and the kind of wistfulness that makes a pitcher of lemonade and an open summer afternoon most satisfying. Even in circles where the word poetry usually leaves fear and trembling in its wake, I have witnessed students warming to his clever turns-of-phrase and vividly humorous imagery, such as those found within one of my favorite poems, "Nostalgia":

Indeed, it is this warm tone that draws readers into his candidly casual narratives. Eschewing strict poetic forms, such as the sonnet, Collins' free-verse concentrates instead on sense of place and time. From English country houses to his own kitchen, the setting is always impeccably humble, the story pitch-perfect and evocative. In one poem, a teacher is afraid to tell the truth about historical violence without realizing that his students are terrorizing each other on the playground; in another, a boy falls in love with an unknown girl based on her notes in a library book. Every title is the embarkation point for a different journey. "Stepping from the title to the first lines is like stepping into a canoe," he is quoted as saying. "A lot of things can go wrong."

If there is one prevailing theme in Collins' work, it is history. Not the dry history of time lines or the cluttered explications of textbooks, but that of everyday (extra)ordinary existence. History as personal and as wide as those anecdotes shared with friends on bar stools or in livingroom tell-alls. History as forthright companion.

In recent conversations with friends who also find Collins' poems amusing, we have often referred to the author simply as "Billy." Not Billy Collins. Certainly not staid William. Just Billy. Once the boy-next door, now the insightful friend-father-flirt who keeps our thoughts jaunty and our literature in "aha!" mode. He has taken the range of human emotions and translated them into an amiable and lovely landscape of the written word. And I have no doubt Billy's poetic landscape will stand the fluctuation of literary seasons, to be revisited with the joy of a favorite countryside path, time and time again.

- Melanie Faith