Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins

Introduction to Poetry
By 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 short.

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.



From The Apple that Astonished Paris, 1996
University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, Ark.
Permissions information.
Copyright 1988 by Billy Collins.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced with permission.