Billy Collins

This morning in the newspaper there was a little article about a poet, Billy Collins, who will be teaching and speaking at Iolani for a few days. One of his poems was in the article:


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.

— Billy Collins


I thought this was a really cool poem. It seems really simple and it's easy to read. It seems simple because it basically tells the reader not to try to dissect every letter of it, just appreciate it for what it is. I liked the imagery and it described poems in ways that you normally wouldn't think of, like feeling it's walls for a light switch or water skiing across the surface of it. I wonder who he's talking about when he says "them," and if he's referring to a specific poem or just poems in general. This poem has kind of a carefree feel, and its message is not to look too hard for the meaning of things.