Introduction to Poetry

Introduction to Poetry
Billy Collins
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.


This poem is a very good way to start our poetry unit, as it tells us how we should and should not be reading poetry. The beginning of the poem tells poetry readers to really get into the poems they are reading. For example, the first stanza tells the reader to look through the poem to 'shed some light' on the deeper meaning. Because there can be a great deal of activity in poems, it is important to dig into it because, at times, the reader won't see anything. At the end, the author states that students often try to draw out a concrete meaning for a poem, rather than leaving it open to different interpretations. Through reading this poem, I have learned the importance of letting poems speak for themselves and taking the poem for what I believe it means.