Poem a Day - Introduction to Poetry

With Ms. Mildahl

Poem a Day

Introduction to Poetry

By Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poemand 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” from The Apple that Astonished Paris. Copyright � 1988, 1996 by Billy Collins https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46712/introduction-to-poetry