Introduction To Poetry -- Billy Collins

Guest poem submitted by Carl Beck:

(Poem #1773) 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

This poem makes me smile, only because it wasn't until I stopped trying to
understand poetry that I was able to open the gate to the wonderful
playground that poetry can be.