Today

“Today” by Billy Collins was first published in the April 2000 issue of Poetry magazine. The poem exhibits Collins’s characteristic irreverent tone and describes the transition from winter into spring and the desire for all the days to be as beautiful as that first warm spring day after a long winter. While the poem begins with an expected description of a beautiful spring day, it veers off into unexpected territory in the flashes of aggressive behavior that convey just how difficult it is to express the kind of intense and overwhelming emotions the speaker experiences.

Poet Biography

Billy Collins was born in New York City in 1941 to a large family with a shared love of literature and words. He holds a PhD in Romantic era poetry, which is a literary movement focusing on nature and introspection that occurred in the late 18th to early 20th century, from the University of California and was a professor of English at Lehman College of the City University of New York until his retirement in 2016. Though the poetry of the Romantics, such as Byron, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, were usually structured, Collins uses free verse in his work almost exclusively.

A prolific poet, he has so far published 17 books of his own poetry beginning in 1977 with his first publication Pokerface. Collins has also edited another half a dozen anthologies of poetry. He was appointed to United States Poet Laureate in 2001 and served two terms until 2003. During his time as US Poet Laureate, Collins focused on bringing poetry into the public sphere in innovative and surprising ways, such as the marriage of poetry and animation in short, animated films made of his poetry that aired on the Sundance channel. He also inspired new connections with younger generations by creating online poetry resources to the Library of Congress. After his terms as US Poet Laureate, he took on the mantle of New York State Poet from 2004 to 2006.

A recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Mark Twain Prize for Humor in Poetry, and fellowships from the National Endowments for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts, Collins makes regular appearances on National Public Radio shows and has a robust online presence. The Wall Street Journal named him America’s Favorite Poet in 2013, and he continues to tour the country with readings, lectures, and other appearances.

Poem Text

Collins, Billy. “Today.” 2000. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

The first line of the poem begins to describe what the speaker considers to be a perfect spring day. There is a “warm intermittent breeze” (Line 2), but it is still early enough in the season for the “brick paths” (Line 7) in the garden to still be cool. The day is so beautiful that the speaker imagines helping everyone to enjoy it, including those who are ordinarily cooped up—caged birds, and anyone still bundled up against the winter cold, such as the canary in the cage or the couple stuck inside a snow globe paperweight and living in a “snow-covered cottage” (Line 14). The speaker’s enthusiasm for the day veers onto the aggressive side, but only because they want to be sure that everyone enjoys the day to its fullest, and because they do not actually have the words to convey the intensity of the emotions they experience on days that are this perfectly springlike. The poem ends with the speaker coming back to reality and reiterating that it is the perfect “kind of day” (Line 18) to inspire such overenthusiastic responses.