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.



"keep my mind from control, my mouth from slander, and my pen from violence. Let me be to poetry what it is to me: hopeful, open-eyed, open-souled, alive, and offering a place to be. And always, always, keep us in perfect peace whose mind is stayed upon Thee."