Dear Reader
"Baudelaire considers you his brother, and Fielding calls out to you every few paragraphs as if to make sure you have not closed the book, and now I am summoning you up again, attentive ghost, dark silent figure standing in the doorway of these words."
-Billy Collins

       Billy Collins is my favorite 'AP Lit Worthy' poet so far because he is not only frequently extremely sarcastic, but his words are also often beautiful. Okay now to delve into the so called meaning of this poem. The very first word is Baudelaire, the name of the late and great poet Charles Baudelaire. Baudelaire was a modernist who also translated Edgar Allen Poe's work to french. Collins' poem reads "Baudelaire considers you his brother", the denotation of the word brother is a male offspring having both parents in common with another offspring; a male numbered among the same kinship group, nationality,race, profession, etc; an associate, a fellow member, fellow countryman, fellow man; brothers, all members of a particular race, or of the human race in general. So, looking at this definition, Baudelaire could either be feeling close to the reader, related in some war familiar way, or he could just be stating the obvious fact that both he and the reader are, presumably, human. In the context of this poem, I believe that the first connotation of a closeness is more likely to be the intended meaning. The next part reads "Fielding calls out to you every few paragraphs as if to make sure you have not closed the book." Now this line has a pretty obvious depressed, anxious tone, as if Fielding is worried about abandonment or abuse. The denotations of "to call out" are an act or instance of calling out; an order to report an emergency or special work, especially at an unusual time or place; a letter, number, or other device for identifying or calling attention to a particular part of an illustration; a challenge to a duel. Now, one of those definitions feels particularly relevant to this line of the poem. For the calling to report an emergency, that is like Fielding calling out to the readers to tell them that the story is not yet over and it is important that they read on, or Fielding could just be calling out because he feels very anxious about nobody reading his poem, so he feels that them leaving or closing the book is an emergency. So with this phrase, Collins is trying to show the tenderness of a poet and how sensitive they are to the readers, they need the readers, without the readers they are nothing. Then Collins' last line about himself describes the readers as ghosts (so far they are brothers, necessities, and now dark silent figures standing in doorways), which is detonated as the soul of a dead person; a mere shadow or semblance, a trace; the principle of life; a red blood cell having no hemoglobin; a fictitious employee. That last definition seems to be the most relevant. In the poem Collins' is saying how sometimes the poets have to imagine people reading their works, even if no one is, even if the people they are thinking of are just ghosts, the poets still need to believe that someone is out there reading it.