Welcome to the American Story.

Stories about what it is that makes America beautiful

and worthy of our love.

This is Chris Flannery with the Claremont Institute.

I call this one

Of Birds and Potatoes.

If you need a little poetry in your life, and who doesn't, Billy Collins can be a good place to start.

Well over a decade ago, the New York Times dubbed Collins the most popular poet in America, and he doesn't seem to have lost his mojo in the meantime.

A recent collection of his poetry spent its first few months in the top 20 of the New York Times

bestseller list and his individual poems regularly of the New York Times Best Seller list.

And his individual poems regularly appear in the Atlantic, Harpers, the New York Times, The New Yorker,

Poetry magazine,

and a dozen smaller poetry magazines across the country.

Still, chances are many literate and well-read Americans haven't heard of Collins

any more than they've heard of the thousands of other American poets writing today.

Interest in poetry has been increasing in recent years,

but as Collins likes to say, more people still seem to be writing than reading poetry.

Collins writes unblushingly to attract new readers to poetry and to encourage those who have

given up to come back.

As his dust jackets will tell you,

Collins is a professor emeritus of English

at Lehman College of the City University of New York. He was poet-loryed of the New York. He was Poet Lorryed of the United States from 2001 to 2003

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