Prepping for April: Introduction to Poetry

I'm not sure who to feel sorrier for: the student who feels obligated to not enjoy poetry or the poor poem under such intense scrutiny....


Introduction to Poetry

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.

by Billy Collins
From The Apple That Astonished Paris. © University of Arkansas Press, 1996.
Thanks to The Writer’s Almanac.