This has nothing to do with Billy Collins but it's a nice story about poets
in trouble times, loosely extracted from Jerome Ch'en & Michael Bullock's
Poems of Solitude.

'The poet Juan Chi lived in the romantic period known as the Three Kingdoms
[220 -264] when the Wei controlled the north and the Wu and Shu shared the
south of China.  In his adult life he witnessed a long, painful and bloody
transfer of power during which the life of every famous man was in danger.
His moral convictions wouldn't allow him to ally himself with a family which
was about to usurp the throne but he realized the grave danger of struggling
against it.  The usurpation was to be dressed up in the cloak of a hundred
virtues and famous men had to have sufficiently convincing excuses for
staying out of politics.  Juan Chi was one of them.
His 'escapism' was evolved on two levels.  He and his friends developed a
political philosophy which was akin to both Taoism and Anarchism.  They
attacked the government, the ruling class, the moral code and the law.  As
serious philosophical thought, it was coherent and persuasive; and as an
escapist's apology it was honourable.
On the second level, Juan Chi and his friends affected an eccentricity which
became the fashion of the period.  He and six other eminent scholars often
met in a bamboo grove where they drank, always excessively, composed poems,
discussed philosophy and played the lute.  They were known as the Seven
Sages of the Bamboo Grove.
The Prince of Chin wanted his son to marry Juan Chi's daughter.  He
approached Juan, but only to find him continuously drunk for sixty days.
The project was eventually dropped.  A young man, who was obviously a spy,
wanted to discuss politics with Juan, but he never found him sober.
Juan received people by showing either the pupils of his eyes or only the
whites.  The pupils were reserved for friends, while ceremonial, and
therefore vulgar, visitors were deprived of the privilege.
He often drove a chariot alone and, as a rule, he lost the way and wept
bitterly.
A prefect went to see him.  They stayed together for a whole day during
which Juan did not utter a single word.  Such a man was obviously not fit
for responsibility.
Philosophy and eccentricity alone might have been enough to save his neck
but he managed to show neither his anger nor his joy.
It is in his poems that we see his true self.'