Introduction to Poetry

Billy Collins

Billy Collins is a contemporary poet well-known for conversational, humorous poems about reading, writing and everyday experiences. Collins was born in 1941 in New York City served two terms as the New York State poet laureate (2004-2006) and the US poet laureate (2001-2003). He is a distinguished professor at the City University of New York.

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.

Collins, Billy. “Introduction to Poetry.” The Apple that Astonished Paris. University of Arkansas, 1996, pp. 58.

ENGL 242: Literary History