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.