Summary Of The Poem Beauty By Billy Collins

The speaker of the poem declares that unlike other misguided souls who choose a disciplined life, he prefers to be a rowdy rebel. The unfortunate choice of comparing himself and others to plants demonstrates the poet’s lack of skill in poetry composition.
The poem consists of five uneven verse paragraphs, which regarding the subject matter makes a perverse kind of sense. That it is pretending to be a poem at all then balances the sense in the negative.
First Verse Paragraph
The speaker begins by setting up a dichotomy between himself and others. He never identifies the others, so the reader assumes that they are any other people whose philosophy disagrees with the speaker’s.
The self-aggrandizing speaker declares, “Let them be as flowers, / always
Second Verse Paragraph
In the second verse paragraph, the speaker reveals his preference; instead of being a well-kept flower stuck in pot of dirt, he’d rather be a “tall, ugly weed, / clinging on cliffs, like an eagle / wind-wavering above high, jagged rocks.” The problem with the logic here is that the ugly weed in also “harnessed” to the dirt.
The speaker thinks that the ugly weed would be “like an eagle,” but clearly, this is impossible. The eagle perching on the “jagged rocks” will eventually fly away, but the ugly weed will remain in place, just as the lovely, well-cared for flowers will remain in place.
Third Verse Paragraph
The speaker then describes what he wishes for himself as an ugly weed; he be able to break “through the surface of stone.” His saxifrage-like existence would allow him “to live, to feel exposed to the madness / of the vast, eternal