Introduction+to+Poetry


 * || 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.

-- Billy Collins ||  ||   || "Introduction to Poetry" is the first poem in the Library of Congress's  Poetry 180 Collection: A Poem a Day for High School Students begun by Billy Collins during his service as the National Poet Laureate.

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