Poem Analysis: Schoolsville By Billy Collins

The Setting in “Schoolsville” Brings to Life, the Reality of a Teacher’s Passion for His Students, through Structure and Comedy That Develops from the Imagination. How creative is the imagination? The narrative of Billy Collin’s “Schoolsville” contrasts the fantasy world and the reality of a former teacher. He reflects on his former students making up a community. “Schoolsville” has 8 stanzas, and each stanza is of various lengths. The author is recognized by his popularity as a modern-day poet. In an article, “A Major Minor Poet: Billy Collins isn't just funny,” Richard Alleva writes, “His poems can make you laugh, but their sound effects are muted and help achieve a dry whimsicality that brings to mind the comedian Bob Newhart or the cartoonist …show more content…
The author does this by using words such as “paper landscape”, “chalk dust flurrying down” and blackboards. Stanza seven illustrates that the person in this poem has created a world of illusion inside his head. He speaks in stanza seven that he “rarely leaves the house, /car deflates in the driveway, / [and] vines twirl around the porchswing. The car “deflating” in the driveway is personal evidence of the person's delusion. The other lines indicate that he spends a lot of time inside his house without venturing out. Judging from these two stanzas, the narrator appears to be …show more content…
In the first three lines Collins writes, that “[g]lancing over my shoulder at the past, /I realize the number of students I have taught/is enough to populate a small town.” This suggest something to the reader about aging and remembering the past years of life. The illusions of the teacher's town, Schoolsville, are full of the memories of former students, and are made almost real by the descriptions of the residents. The teacher’s mind is recollecting the past. In stanza eight he reveals that he is trying to keep his profession alive by “lecturing the wall paper, /quizzing the chandelier, [and] reprimanding the air.” What really catches the reader’s attention is that within the poem the author uses humor to make it appear more alive. All the sudden this imaginary town does not seem so unrealistic. The setting is created by all kinds of images of school. The reader can connect with “the boy who always had his hand up” and “the girl who signed her papers in lipstick” by recalling long school days of his or her own past experiences. The author draws the reader in with sympathy for the