"Introduction to Poetry" by Billy Collins

“We seem to always know where we are in a Billy Collins poem, but not necessarily where he is going. I love to arrive with him at his arrivals. He doesn’t hide things from us, as I think lesser poets do. He allows us to overhear, clearly, what he himself has discovered.” 

-Stephen Dunn

Collins served as U.S. Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003, and as the New York State Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006. His other honors and awards include the Mark Twain Prize for Humor in Poetry, as well as fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. 

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.

In Billy Collin's "Introduction to Poetry" the speaker urges students, and any reader of poetry for that matter, to enjoy and appreciate poetry as the art that it is. The speaker that we understand to be a teacher asserts that poetry is most appreciated as a sensory experience. The beauty found in poetry is simple: observation in the deepest sense of the word, observation that allows one "to waterski across the surface," viewing it in different lights, and hearing the rhythm and meter with an "ear [pressed] ... against its hive." We often find ourselves "[tying] the poem to a chair with rope and tortur[ing] a confession out of it" but this is what ruins poetry. Instead of appreciating it for art, we tend to break it down into a science, a method, a procedure. Rather than seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and tasting poetry with the words on the page, we dissect each line and stanza, obliterating any meaning for which we begin to search.

To completely disregard the speaker's requests, analysis of the poem's structure follows. The seven stanzas of Collins's poem vary in length between one and three lines. The seemingly random stanza length provides the reader with an ongoing perception of new and different ideas. This, in combination with the vivid imagery helps Collins's ideas to jump off the page, completely throwing away any need to "beat [the poem] with a hose to find out what it really means." The imagery reinforces the speaker's call to appreciate the artistry behind poetry with the senses, and the reader can't help but do so.