Introduction to Poetry

April 25, 2015 

By: Billy Collins  

I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light  like a color slideor 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.