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Billy Collins, 76, was the U.S. Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003 and is the author of 11 collections of poetry, including his latest, “The Rain in Portugal” (Random House), now in paperback. He spoke with Marc Myers.
I wrote my first poem in the early 1950s when I was 10. I was in the back seat of my parents’ car as my father drove up New York’s FDR Drive. I saw a large sailboat on the East River and asked my mother for a pen. I wanted to write down how I felt.
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