Introduction to Poetry
By Billy Collins
I ask them to take a poem  Â
and hold it up to the light  Â
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem  Â
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem’s room  Â
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski  Â
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  Â
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose  Â
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)
