Billy collins full biography of bill

American boxer (1961–1984)

For other people with the same name, see William Collins.

For other people named Bill Collins, see Bill Collins (disambiguation).

William Ray Collins Jr. (September 21, 1961 – March 6, 1984) was an American professional boxer who competed from 1981 to 1983. He was undefeated before his career was cut short after his final fight when he sustained serious injuries against Luis Resto in their ten-round bout. Aided by his trainer Panama Lewis, Resto used illegal, tampered gloves with an ounce of the gloves' cushioning removed, along with hand wraps that had been soaked in plaster of Paris.

Early life

Billy Collins was born to a working class Irish family in Antioch, Tennessee. His father and manager, Billy Collins Sr.(1937–2018), was a welterweight professional boxer during the late 1950s and early 1960s who won 38 of his 56 professional fights. Collins Jr. followed his father's footsteps and started training with him since a very young age. Also a welterweight, Collins won his first 14 fights as a professional, among them a decision over future world title challenger Harold Brazier.

Luis Resto fight

Collins was matched against Puerto Rican journeyman Luis Resto at Madison Square Garden in New York on June 16, 1983, on the undercard of the Roberto Durán vs. Davey Moore light middleweight title fight. Collins entered the fight as a betting favorite but took a heavy beating for almost the whole fight and lost by a unanimous decision.

At the end of the fight, Collins' father, who was also his trainer, noticed that Resto's gloves felt thinner than normal and demanded that they be impounded. A subsequent investigation by the New York State Boxing Commission concluded that Resto's trainer, Panama Lewis, had removed an ounce of padding from each glove, making his punches harder and more damaging to Collins. The fight result was changed to a no contest.

Lewis' New York boxing license

Billy Collins was born in New York, New York, on March 22, 1941. He is the author of several books of poetry, including Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems (Random House, 2013), Horoscopes for the Dead: Poems (Random House, 2012); Ballistics: Poems (Random House, 2008); She Was Just Seventeen (Modern Haiku Press, 2006); The Trouble with Poetry: And Other Poems (Random House, 2005); Nine Horses (Pan Macmillan, 2002); Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems (Random House, 2001); Picnic, Lightning (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998); The Art of Drowning (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995), which was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; Questions About Angels (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991), which was selected by Edward Hirsch for the National Poetry Series; The Apple That Astonished Paris (University of Arkansas Press, 1988); Video Poems (Applezaba Press, 1979); and Pokerface (Kenmore Press, 1977).

A recording of Collins reading thirty-three of his poems, The Best Cigarette, was released in 1997. Collins’s poetry has appeared in anthologies, textbooks, and a variety of periodicals, including Poetry, American Poetry Review, American Scholar, Harper’s, The Paris Review, and The New Yorker. His work has also been featured in the Pushcart Prize anthology and has been chosen several times for the annual Best American Poetry series. Collins has edited Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry (Random House, 2003), an anthology of contemporary poems for use in schools, and was a guest editor for the 2006 edition of The Best American Poetry.

About Collins, the poet Stephen Dunn has said,

We seem to always know where we are in a Billy Collins poem, but not necessarily where he is going. I love to arrive with him at his arrivals. He doesn’t hide things from us, as I think lesser poets do. He allows us to overhear, clearly, what he himself has discovered.

Collins s

Personal

Born March 22, 1941, in New York, NY; son of William S. (an electrician) and Katherine M. (a nurse) Collins; married; wife's name, Diane (an architect), January 21, 1979. Education: College of the Holy Cross, B.A., 1963; University of California, Riverside, Ph.D. (romantic poetry), 1971. Hobbies and other interests: Jazz music.

Addresses

Home— Somers, NY. Agent— Chris Calhoun, Sterling Lord Literistic, 65 Bleeker St., New York, NY 10012.

Career

Lehman College, City University of New York, professor of English, beginning 1971. Writer-in-residence at Sarah Lawrence College. Performs poetry readings; has appeared on National Public Radio.

Awards, Honors

Poetry fellow, New York Foundation for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, and Guggenheim Foundation; Bess Hokin Award, Oscar Blumenthal Award, and Levinson Prize, all from Poetry; appointed "Literary Lion" by New York Public Library; winner of National Poetry Series competition, 1990, for "Questions about Angels"; named eleventh U.S. poet laureate, 2001-03; Mark Twain Award for humorous poetry, Poetry Foundation, 2004.

Writings

POETRY

Pokerface (limited edition), Kenmore, 1977.

Video Poems, Applezaba (Long Beach, CA), 1980.

The Apple That Astonished Paris, University of Arkansas Press (Fayetteville, AR), 1988.

Questions about Angels, Morrow (New York, NY), 1991.

The Art of Drowning,University of Pittsburgh Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 1995.

Picnic, Lightning,University of Pittsburgh Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 1998.

Taking off Emily Dickinson's Clothes, Picador (London, England), 2000.

Sailing Alone around the Room: New and Selected Poems, Random House (New York, NY), 2001.

Nine Horses: Poems, Random House (New York, NY), 2002.

Contributor of poetry to university publications and journals, including Flying Faucet Review and Oink.

OTHER

The Eye of the Poet: Six Views of the Art and Craft of Poetry, edited by David Citino, Oxford University

American poet

For other people named Billy Collins, see Billy Collins (disambiguation).

For other people named William Collins, see William Collins (disambiguation).

William James Collins (born March 22, 1941) is an American poet who served as the Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He was a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York, retiring in 2016. Collins was recognized as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library (1992) and selected as the New York State Poet for 2004 through 2006. In 2016, Collins was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. As of 2020, he is a teacher in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton.

Early life and education

Collins was born in Manhattan to William and Katherine Collins and grew up in Queens and White Plains. William was born to a large family from Ireland and Katherine was from Canada. His mother, Katherine Collins, was a nurse who stopped working to raise the couple's only child. Mrs. Collins had the ability to recite verses on almost any subject, which she often did, and cultivated in her young son the love of words, both written and spoken. Billy Collins' father was a worker on Wall Street who Collins attributes as an inspiration to his humor.

Collins attended Archbishop Stepinac High School and received a B.A. in English from the College of the Holy Cross in 1963. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. in romantic poetry from the University of California, Riverside. His professors at Riverside included Victorian scholar and poet Robert Peters. There he came under the influence of contemporary poets like Karl Shapiro, Howard Nemerov and Reed Whittemore, and during his adolescence he was influenced by Beat Generation poets as well. In 1975 Collins founded The Mid-Atlantic Review with his friends Walter Blanco and Steve Bailey.