Beginning the Poetry Unit

Introduction to Poetry

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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. 

Billy Collins, “Introduction to Poetry” from The Apple that Astonished Paris. Copyright � 1988, 1996 by Billy Collins. Reprinted with the permission of the University of Arkansas Press.

Source: The Apple that Astonished Paris (1996)