This program is sponsored by the Covley Foundation based in Los Angeles, California.

The Covley Foundation is dedicated to advancing science for the benefit of humanity.

I'm Alan Olga and this is Clear In Vivid, conversations about connecting and communicating.

I feel the poem having a certain willfulness that poem might take on a kind of whims of

quality about where it's going.

So the poem might want to go in a direction that you hadn't anticipated.

And that really is the beginning of the real fun of poetry is when the poem is shifting

in a little out of your control.

It develops an intelligence along the way sometimes.

If you're lucky, if not, it just ends up in the way it's best.

That's my friend Billy Collins of the poet.

I love his poetry and so do millions of other people.

He was the US poet laureate from 2001 to 2003.

His poems are full of surprises, often making a trip over your expectations.

Sometimes finding yourself thinking more deeply than you thought you would and sometimes

just laughing out loud.

I wanted to know how he does it.

This is really going to be fun for me because we've had a lot of different kinds of communication

represented on the show.

But we've never talked about poetry.

And as far as I'm concerned, you're the guy to talk about poetry with.

I'm your man.

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