POeT SHOTS is a monthly series published on the first Monday of the month. It features work by established writers followed by commentary and insight by The Mad Blogger, a mysterious figure who is in love with poetry and the power of the written word.
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 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.
Happy National Poetry Month!
This masterful poem from Billy Collins asks the question of us as writers and readers of poetry, “Why do we write; why do we read?”. The language here is gorgeous and active – Collins asks his readers (or more likely, students) to read a poem by “pressing an ear against its hive,” holding it “up to the light like a color slide,” and “waterskiing across the surface.”
It’s the violent turn in the last line of this poem that clinches it for me. Instead of appreciating the beauty and simple pleasure of reading the poem for its own sake, we “begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.” We start sharpening the knives to dissect the meaning. We pull the poem apart like a watchmaker to see just what makes it tick, with gears and pins strewn across our notebooks and laptops.
Maybe there’s a middle road. Instead of searching for the elusive and all-encompassing meaning of a poem, perhaps we should strive instead to appreciate the sounds that make up the words, the words that form the images, the images that create the lines, the lines that hold together the stanzas, and finally, the stanzas that define the poems. This Mad Blogger is planning to slow down and enjoy the break from our current reality that poetry grants us and hopes that you do the same.
The Mad Blogger is dedicated to showing that poetry is not some mystery. There are no right or wrong ways to read poetry; it is for everyone to read, understand and enjoy. The Mad Blogger is all of us and none of us. As long as people still believe in the power of the written word, The Mad Blogger will be there, providing insight, perspective, and (hopefully) inspiration.