A place that's also inspiring. "There's a rustic beauty here. I've recently been on the phone trying to describe southwestern Oklahoma to my friends."

Still, while Billy Collins found Quartz Mountain particularly suited to his creative needs, he's less excited by the poetry the rest of the country has produced.

"One of the reasons people don't read as much poetry anymore is the fault of the poets," he said. "It's not the public's fault. There's an awful lot of bad poetry out there. I'd say about 87 percent of the poetry in America isn't worth reading."

It's the other 13 percent, Collins said, that he lives for. "Poetry should be transparent. Transparent poems tend to teach themselves."

Or those poems should something about the state of the poet and his environment.

For Collins, that philosophy bubbled to the surface when he was asked, as poet laureate, to write a poem commemorating the first anniversary of the terrorists' attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

"I've only been asked to write two poems in my life," he said. "One was on the 300th anniversary of Trinity School and the other was a request by Congress commemorating the anniversary of the 9-11."

Initially, Collins said, he turned down the request.

"I didn't want to," he said. "But, later, as I thought about it, it disturbed me that I didn't feel I was up to the challenge."

Collins changed his mind. He said he took advantage of two literary devices -- the form of a eulogy and the alphabet -- to build his work. "I needed the eulogy and the alphabet, I needed those as a frame for the poem."

Later, Collins read his work to a joint session of Congress. "I remember the tears running down Senator Patrick Moynihan's face. It was an interesting way to see the country's politicans."

It was in moments like those, Collins said, that he understood the power of the poem.

But even with his assent, several best-selling books and a closet full of awards, Collins continues to write -- technology remains more of a fascination than a tool.

And in his writing, he continually goes back to his roots -- a pen, a piece of paper and a simple idea. "For me, the future is basically the next poem. It's always been that way. It's always been one poem at a time."

M. Scott Carter 366-3545 scarter@normantranscript.com