I have come across Billy Collins’ poem, “Introduction to Poetry” many times, and each time I read it, it resonates with me more and more. The poem is fairly short and it talks about poetry and how to enjoy it.
The poem reads as follows:
“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.” (Collins).
I really enjoy this poem because it talks about how poetry is meant to be enjoyed and the reader is supposed to feel emotions from the piece. The poem is a work of art that takes the reader on a journey. It then switches to how all people want to do with poetry is tie it “to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it” (Collins). People often try to dissect poems that aren’t meant to be dissected and analyze them in search of an underlying meaning that doesn’t exist.
Throughout my middle school and early high school years, I have been forced to study poems this way: Not enjoying poetry for what it is, but rather figure out what the poem ‘symbolizes’. Many English classes teach students that the purpose of reading poetry is, as Collins says in his poem, “to find out what it really means”. They say that a poem always has a greater meaning; it always represents a different idea. But that’s the thing. Sometimes a poem about a little boy playing with a puppy is truly just about a little boy playing with a puppy. And the reader is supposed to appreciate the boys merriment. Or a poem about a young orphan crying in the rain is supposed to make the reader feel sad and pity the orphan. These emotions come straight from the poem itself, there is no need to scrutinize the words for other interpretations in order to be moved by or derive pleasure from the poem.
Poems often do have underlying motifs or greater meanings… but so what? If you want to strap down the poem and beat it until you might find something inside, then so be it. But people should be able to read a poem and enjoy it for what it is without having to examine every detail of it looking for allusions to some other ‘more important’ concept.
