Poetry Extended Journal

For my Last Journal I decided to do a research paper on both Billy Collins and Mary Oliver. Since I was at my College orientation on Friday and didn't learn how to write poetry, I decided it would be best to do research rather then attempt writing in a style I don't understand.

Here are the sites I used for research:
http://project1.caryacademy.org/echoes/03-04/Billy_Collins/Defaultcollins.htm
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/Billy-Collins
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/278

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/265
http://www.maryoliver.net/biography.html

Collins
William (Billy) Collins was born March 22, 1941 in New York City. All his life he has shown proficiency towardswriting, "From day one, his talents as a writer shined through, as he was able to express his thoughts on paper well throughout grade school" (Khoury). In his lifetime he has received fellowships from New York Foundation for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, and The Guggenheim Foundation. Collin's most well known book is The Best Cigarette, to which he has recorded all thirty-three poems, and released the recording in 1997. He has won a plethora of awards, some of which include; Poetry Magazine's "Poet of the Year" in 1994, Literary Lion of the New York Public Library, and New York State Poet for 2004. His single greatest award was in 2001, when he was named the United States Poet Laureate. Billy Collins is alive today, living in Somers, New York, and a professor at Lehman College. He has also taught at Columbia University and Sarah Lawrence College. Collins has produced seven published books of poetry; Nine Horses, Sailing Alone Around the Room, Picnic Lightning, The Best Cigarette, The Art of Drowning, Questions About Angels, and The Apple that Astonished Paris.

Oliver
Mary Oliver was born in Maple Heights, Ohio, on September 10, 1935. Oliver never graduated from college, "Oliver attended both Ohio State University and Vassar College" (poets.org). Despite having never earned a college diploma in writing, she has had great sucess. Her first poetry book, "No Voyage, and Other Poems, was published in 1963," (poets.org) and has since published many others. Her repertoire includes; Thirst (2006), Why I Wake Early (2004), Owls and Other Fantasies : Poems and Essays (2003), Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems (1999), West Wind (1997), and White Pine (1994). Oliver's poems tend to shape themselves around the beauty and complexity of nature, and have won her many awards. Her book, New and Selected Poems (1992) won the National Book award. House of Light (1990) won the Christopher Award, and American Primitive (1983) earned Oliver the Pulitzer Prize as well. Not only is Mary Oliver a poet, but she is quite a professional vocalist as well; "Mary Oliver has been writing and performing for twenty-five years" (MaryOliver.net). Mary Oliver is also still alive today, and resides in her house in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she continues to create works of poetic fiction.