Collins Opinion

As we practice and learn about the craft of writing, we sometimes forget what it is we are supposed to be doing when we read a piece. This is especially true when it comes to poetry. We forget to enjoy the words and allow them to resonate within us. In the poem entitled “ Introduction to Poetry,” Billy Collins reminds us of this fact. 

Collins’ Poem is listed below: 

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

In the first stanza tells us to examine a poem for what it is. Take a few moments and see what it is to see. Next, he invites us to listen to the sound of the words when they are spoken. There is so much information to be learned just by examining the poem’s surface and listening to how it sounds when spoken aloud. Collins then suggests that we begin to dig a little deeper. He asks us to probe around to see what we can discover. To have no expectations going in. To feel our way around the poem. Letting its energy splash against our faces, enjoying every aspect the poem offers us. Collins cautions us about digging too deep into a poem. Stripping it down to its bare bones, as if it will relinquish the location of the Holy Grail. We all know that the Grail is the heart of those who seek it. Just as the meaning of the poem read.