Billy Collins, the new poet laureate of the United States, has a few moments to talk. Classes began last week at the City University of New York campus where he teaches, his ninth book is to be released today and he will be "pinballing across the country to bang the drum for poetry," probably 40 times, while running a reading series for the Library of Congress.

"It's a very busy time, for a poet, anyway," he said.

His self-effacing wit has helped elevate Collins, 60, to the role of the people's poet, both popular and praised, more than 30 years after sitting alone in an unairconditioned World War II barracks on Linden Street as a UCR graduate student buried in books.

Collins will begin his appointment as poet laureate next month, succeeding Stanley Kunitz and joining the ranks of Robert Frost and Elizabeth Bishop, among others.

Poet Billy Collins, a professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York, reads during his convocation address at the college last October. (AP photo)

The yearlong gig, which pays $35,000, requires giving a reading at the Library of Congress and little else, so that the official bard can pursue pet projects.

'Poetry 180'

Joseph Brodsky pushed for poetry to be available in airports, grocery stores and hotels. Gwendolyn Brooks and Rita Dove encouraged children to write in verse. Robert Pinsky handed out anthologies in subway stations and posted poetry on the Internet.

As for Collins, he wants a poem read aloud at high schools every day of the school year. He calls the effort "Poetry 180" for the number of days in the academic calendar. In the coming weeks, he will select the poems to be read over the public-address system at the end of morning announcements.

"The students will not be tested on it, nor will it be part of the teaching curriculum," Collins writes to educators in a letter explaining the initiative. "Each poem is there simply to be listened to. The hope is that students will begin to react to poetry not only as a subject that is taught in English classes, but also as a feature of daily life."

Inspiration in daily life

Collins eases readers into his poems with everyday images, such as weighing a dog on a bathroom scale and suffering from the willies. He adds some humor, then ends it at the "dizzying heights of speculation," as Collins puts it.

In poem called "The History Teacher," he writes:

"Trying to protect his students' innocence

he told them the Ice Age was really just

the Chilly Age, a period of a million years

when everyone had to wear sweaters."

And he ends the poem:

"The children would leave his classroom

for the playground to torment the weak and the smart,

mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses,

while he gathered up his notes and walked home

past flower beds and white picket fences,

wondering if they would believe that soldiers

in the Boer War told long, rambling stories

designed to make the enemy nod off."

His University of Pittsburgh Press books "The Art of Drowning" (1995), "Picnic, Lightning" (1998) and "Questions About Angels," a 1991 collection that was reprinted three years ago, have sold more than 90,000 copies, leading Collins to a six-figure contract with Random House for three books.

"Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems" debuts today, more than a year later than expected because of a dispute between the two publishers over rights to his early work.

A boost from Keillor

His popularity soared in 1997 after Garrison Keillor read several of his poems on the National Public Radio show, "A Prairie Home Companion." John Updike and poet Edward Hirsch also are among Collins' fans.

"It has this wonderfully casual and relaxed sort of tone," said Judy Kronenfeld, a UCR lecturer who uses Collins' work in her classes on creative writing. "The themes are same old themes, like death. But the subjects are appealing because they are unexpected."

Inland connection

When Collins isn't writing, he teaches poetry and creative writing at Lehman College of the City University of New York. He lives in Westchester County, N. Y., with his wife, Diane, an architect and graduate of Poly High School in Riverside. Her father, Ed Olbright, is a retired businessman who still resides in Riverside.

Collins was born and raised in New York City, received a bachelor's degree from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., and earned a doctorate in romantic poetry at UCR. He also taught at San Bernardino Valley College.

He chose the Riverside campus, which was the first nonparochial school he had attended since the first grade, for two reasons. One was a professor, Frederick Hoffman. The other was a desire to go west of the Mississippi River.

In 1963, he drove across the country in a black Sunbeam Alpine with British plates. After reaching Riverside, Collins stopped at a service station. He asked the attendant where he could find the river. The kid's face went blank.

"On the East Cost," Collins said, "if there was a town called Riverside, there was at least a river."

'Intelligent, charming, elegant'

At UCR, Collins read more than he was assigned and wrote when he could. The combination of the sports car and the breadth of his literary knowledge set him apart, said Christian Zacher, who was Collins' roommate for two years.

"He was an unusual person to run into in Riverside in the Sixties," said Zacher, who is now a professor at Ohio State University. "He was an intelligent, charming, elegant person in all ways."

Collins focused on modern literature at first, then studied medieval works before realizing that romanticism was the right fit. His dissertation interpreted William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose poetry would become a model for Collins.

His scholarly work was "very intelligent, but not the kind that made a big splash," said Robert Gleckner, a Duke University professor emeritus who advised Collins at UCR. "Obviously, he saw his way after the dissertation."

Matthew Tresaugue can be reached by e-mail at mtresaugue@pe.com or by phone at (909) 248-6127.