“The Breather” by Billy Collins (2008)

This poem explores the idea that relationships with other people are only mirrors of relationship to selves. Like “Some Days,” this poem also utilizes the everyday imagery (in this poem, a telephone) as a vehicle to explore a much deeper point of view regarding the self and, by extension, others.

“Axe Handles” by Gary Snyder (1983)

Snyder is part of the Beat movement to which Collins attributes some of his poetic influence. This poem comments on the influence of past figures on the present and the continuity of future generations. As the speaker and his son utilize an old axe handle to make a new one, the speaker reflects on the influences that have shaped him and how he is affecting his son and future generations.

“Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1816)

During an interview at the Aspen Idea Festival in 2007, Collins cited Samuel Taylor Coleridge as the poet who has most influenced his own work. “Kubla Khan” is one of Coleridge’s most famous and most oft-discussed poems. It’s a snippet that came from a larger dream state—possibly induced by Coleridge’s ingestion of laudanum—a drink made from alcohol and opium that was once used as a narcotic painkiller.