Introduction to Poetry
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.

There is something to be said for letting words be words, the same holds true for music and it seems that it is easier to let music just flow, to cascade across our senses. Poetry, however, is often taught as a hostile exercise. As students, we are trained to be critical; to demand answers to our questions and to have the work submit to our collective wills. Simply put, sometimes a poem is just that, nothing more than a musical string of words to enjoy.