LONE WOLF, Okla. — Billy Collins unwinds tangled wires of his iPod's earbuds and stretches them across a library table. He places the music player next to a spiral notebook.

The iPod stores just 37 songs, Collins says: "Some John Lee Hooker, some Bob Dylan, a little '50s Doo-Wop." He uses it to tune out noise in crowded places.

The device remains untouched here, in a remote lodge in Southwest Oklahoma, where the native New Yorker instead picks up a pen, opens his notebook and scribbles a few lines.

Collins has several best-selling books to his credit and a closet full of awards. He has been named a New York Public Library "Literary Lion," a Guggenheim fellow, poet laureate of New York, and for two terms from 2001 through 2003, poet laureate of the United States.

Since mid-June, he has been an Oklahoman. Chosen as a member of the faculty of the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute, he has been sharing experiences with a select group of high school students. He recently gave an hour-long poetry reading and talk, a performance that prompted a spontaneous standing ovation.

Collins breaks from his work at the Arts Institute's home at the Quartz Mountain lodge for about a half-hour to talk about jazz music, writing, Oklahoma's stark beauty and poetry -- the good and bad.

"There’s an awful lot of bad poetry out there," he said, blaming poets for the fact fewer people read their work. "I’d say about 87 percent of the poetry in America isn’t worth reading.”

Poetry should be transparent, said Collins, whose own evokes images of rain, snow, jazz and even household items. Poetry, he said, should say something about the state of the poet and the poet's environment.