The Lanyard Comments

Such a beautiful poem!

good poem it amazing

I'm onboard for your poetry Mastercourse; these are the first two of your poems I have read. The Lanyard and The Iron Bridge. Both poems make me glad I took the course. I feel sure we can talk, now.

why did you change spacing and words? it was beautiful the way it was

It lets me feel very emotional about this Poem when it talked about the part where the mother had taken care of the author and through this poem, I leaned that mother’s love is very nice to all the kids who were/was their children.

I loved the poem, reminds me of the daisy chains we made and gave as presents. Any present given to a Mother is appreciated for the love given rather than the value of the gift.

brought me tears and laughter, thank you!

i tested her loloololl

dont test me angiedont test me angiedont test me angiedont test me angiedont test me angiedont test me angiedont test me angie

this is boring and annoying and nobody really cares that much about a poem

I no more believe he thought a gift of a lanyard made them even than I believe he made the lanyard on Mars. No child has such thoughts. Collins does not tell the truth. Children give things to their mothers to make them happy, not to keep an account even, a thought that has never crossed the mind of a single child since the dawn of creation- except for Collinsized children, I guess. God! Tell the truth about us! ! !

rueful is the perfect word. And as an aside, now we know that Billy Collins plays piano, or at least has one in his studio. The poem also shows the process of finding poetic ideas randomly, a cool concept for teaching students to seek out where poems hide.

Feels arbitrary and playful, and random while still intentional. I think it's not what he meant, but what you experience of it. I think he himself would wish for us to experience it in as many ways as we can, open to all of those ridiculous or insightful and definitely varied ways that it can be felt...and even experience it again through each other's interpretations. And that is when it becomes a poem. Before that, when it is just what he meant and only what he meant, then it may be a poem, but it isn't really poetry.