Introduction to Poetry

BY 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.