Intro 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.

-I think that this poem can be both very true and also not true at all. First, from a teacher's perspective, this is what they want a student to feel when they are reading a poem and the teachers always feel like students read to much into a poem. But from a student's view and from my experience, a teacher always wants me to read more into it and just go deeper and deeper. Beisdes from that, my favorite lines are "walk inside a poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch" because I know this feeling and I think a poem is more powerful and meaningful when you can connect your personal life. This was a good poem to introduce the new unit on poetry.