Introduction to Poetry
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.
I usually don't go in for poems about poetry, but in this case I make an exception because Collins migrates toward a more salient question than what a poem should be--he asks and answers how we should read it. I think this is a pretty important question to ask when reading anything; it speaks to why people continue to write and read poetry. It answers the perennial question of the value of literature by suggesting that poetry reflects experience. Collins' imagery makes a poem a sensory experience, mingling aesthetic sensibility with experiential narrative. The union of imagery and narrative allows a poem to relay deeply significant emotions.
As a kind of instruction manual on reading poetry, the poem would work well as the first poem in the book. I think it would be a good start to getting kids to think about imagery in structured way--instead of going straight for the meaning, they need to identify things. Once they've got a sense of what's going on in the poem, they can figure out how those things work together to create a holistic theme. The idea of "meaning" also offers entree into the concept of the "center" that I intend to address with the other poems. The idea that poems could have a multiplicity of meanings will be important when trying to destabilize meaning in later works.
My intention with this poem, then, is first to engage students in identifying images. When they have done that, they should be able to show how the images appeal to the senses (auditory, tactile, visual) to suggest that the goal of a poem is to engage the senses. Finally, I'll ask about the concluding image and how the satirical phrase "what it really means" denies that a poem has a "real meaning" as opposed to many meanings that arise of its presentation of sensory images.
1) Identify three images in the poem. What senses do these images appeal to? Why would the author choose to appeal to so many senses in his poem?
2) What is the tone of the concluding image? Why might the author choose such loaded words to describe reading a poem? How do you think you should read a poem? How does the author think you should read a poem?
3) Given the author's description of how to read a poem, why do you think there are so many different kinds of sensory appeals in the poem? What does a poem "mean" in light of these appeals?
The first question should allow the students to get a grip on the figurative language and realize that the author is engaging many different senses. The second should orient the student to how not to read a poem. The instructor should highlight the contrast between the two sections of the poem to spark discussion about how to read a poem. The final question should begin to bring up the idea of "meaning", how it is created, and how it is reinforced with language. Specifically, thee instructor should bring up the idea that poem's may represent an experience rather than a substantive meaning. Reading a poem, then, may be less about a means to an end than a way of exploring a topic. The conclusion does not represent a hard and fast truth, but a potential way of thinking about or responding to the world.
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