Thoughts on "Introduction to Poetry" by Billy collins

I asked 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 a rope

and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose 

to find out what it really means.

Billy Collins

When I first saw the assignment of reading 5 poems on the class agenda, I was horrified. I've always hated anything that is related to poem in general, because when I think of poems, I automatically think of an analysis essay that would come along with the poem.

But then I started reading, and I was so excited about this particular poem. It was almost a euphoric sense of revenge through this poem!

 I don't know what they do in school with poems in the States, but in Vietnam, back in my years being in middle school, poem was a form of torture. We would read a poem from a text book, and have the whole period of lecture on the "meaning" between those stanzas. The teachers would try to open up a few ideas, then have us students discussing about what the author wanted to say, the deep meaning he/she hid in that poem. Or in another way of saying it, to the teachers, the poems were written using all sort of metaphors, and we need to get decode them. I mean, really?! What if the author was just simply describing his/her moods, or some normal objects? And all the sophisticated meaning were just the something that teachers themselves come up with? Moreover, some of the poems were written hundreds of years ago, how are us twelve year-olds supposed to get the meaning out of them?

So in short, this poem is awesome.