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.