American poet laureate, Billy Collins has a wonderful article in Saturday's Wall Street Journal on his principal source of influence, the Warner Brother's Saturday morning cartoons that he watched as a child. He writes: "Plus, characters could jump dimensions, leaping around in time and space, their sudden exits marked by a rifle-shot sound effect. Anticipating the tricks of metafiction, these creatures could hop right out of the world of cartoon and into our world...This freedom to transcend the laws of basic fiction, to hop around in time and space, and to skip from one dimension to another has long been a crucial aspect of imaginative poetry."
The article also includes some of Collins' wonderful poems -- a tribute to the mythic inner natures of these well known cartoon figures -- Bugs Bunny, Porky, Daffy, and Elmer (all of which were first published in Pokerface (1977).
And as a huge fan of Billy Collins' poetry, here's a terrific animated version of his poem "Forgetfulness." You can see eight other animated poems on YouTube if you type his name into the search box.
