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    A Study Guide for Billy Collins's "The History Teacher"
    A Study Guide for Billy Collins's "The History Teacher"
    A Study Guide for Billy Collins's "The History Teacher"
    Ebook35 pages22 minutes

    A Study Guide for Billy Collins's "The History Teacher"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Billy Collins's "The History Teacher," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateSep 28, 2016
    ISBN9781535837323
    A Study Guide for Billy Collins's "The History Teacher"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Billy Collins's "The History Teacher" - Gale

      13

      The History Teacher

      Billy Collins

      1991

      Introduction

      Billy Collins is one of the most popular and accessible poets of modern-day America, qualities that earned him a place as the poet laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. The History Teacher, a poem from his 1991 volume Questions about Angels, brings his characteristic humor and irony to bear on the problems of education. Whether or not education makes people good is a perennial question that Collins addresses, in the specific context of the crisis in education that was widely perceived in American culture when the poem was composed in the early 1990s. Collins answers the question, What happens when what the schools are teaching young people is false? Although a thoughtful reading of The History Teacher reveals that Collins has a serious message, the surface of the poem is composed of comic echoes of popular culture, from The Flintstones to Leave It to Beaver. The History Teacher was reprinted in 2002 in Collins's retrospective anthology Sailing Alone around the Room.

      Author Biography

      William James Collins was born on March 22, 1941, in New York City. His father, William, was an electrician, and his mother, Katherine, was a nurse who, as was then customary, stopped working to take care of Collins when he was born. In an interview with Robert Potts for the Coachella Review, Collins described the deep impression made by his parents on his writing with his characteristic humor:

      I think what really happened psychologically is that I started off writing in the voice of my father (wise-cracking) and only later did I find a way to admit my mother (generous, empathetic). And I didn't even need long sessions on the couch to figure that

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