He likes jazz, too. Nothing wrong with that. Even the talented sourpuss, Philip Larkin, was an admirer. But jazz, above all, is beautiful because it's un-obvious, multilayered, tricky. Collins says he usually finishes a poem in one sitting, though he'll often go back and tinker.
Inspiration crops up in unlikely places.
Collins' influences range from Ferlinghetti and cummings to Stevens, Hart Crane and Ginsberg, and his teenage jottings mimicked these writers' erudition and complex verse. I thought to be a poet you had to speak in code. It was like verbal knitting. It never got him anywhere, though. At the end of Osso Bucco, for instance, Collins' wife is on the phone, while he continues to savor the 'lion of contentment' that has 'placed a warm, heavy paw' on his chest.