Six questions for Billy Collins

1. Do you think badly of this literary strategy of comparing a belovéd to a multitude of objects?
2. How many common metaphors do you address in this poem, or do you stick to purely random creations?
3. In the last three stanzas, what motivated you to turn the speaker’s attention to him/herself?
4. At the end, you interject “somehow” into a line with which you began. Is this meant to trivialize the entire poem’s concept?
5. Is the poem’s title, “Litany,” a reference to the poem itself, or a style which you are imitating?
6. At times, the speaker seems to reference his or her own literary strategies. Is this meant to further depict the poem as overtly contrived?