"Introduction to Poetry" by Billy Collins

Sometimes called the "most famous poet in America," Billy Collins was appointed as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003 and is now a teacher in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton. 

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.

This modern poem, although short, provides the reader with the basic "dos" and "don'ts" of reading and analyzing poetry. The parallel structure that begins each "do" in the poem creates the notion that reading poetry is simple and enjoyable and that it is the reader that makes it an often unpleasant experience. It uses metaphors to create verbal imagery that all people will understand and to evoke a particular feeling about reading poetry. For example, "Holding it up to the light" represents taking a deeper look at the meaning of the poem, "dropping a mouse into the poem" represents how you are supposed to enjoy the complexity, and "waterskiing across the surface of a poem" represents having fun while reading the poem. At the end of the poem in the last stanza, Collins mentions the "don'ts" that people always seem to do when reading poetry. He says that readers analyze each poem too much and don't ever appreciate a poem simply for its beauty. The reader instead destroys the beauty and "beats each poem with a hose to find out what it really means" and "tortures a confession out of it" making the overall experience unpleasant and unfulfilling. I enjoyed this poem because it expresses how I feel about reading poetry. I think that in school the "poetry unit" often encompasses far too much time and that sometimes poetry needs to be taken at face value to appreciate the beauty of its simplicity.