Intoduction to Poetry by Billy Collins

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.

 Colllins has a metaphor in almost every stanza in this poem.
First, what is a metaphor? A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to another object or action to which it i not literally applicable. The first metaphor is found in the second stanza "or press an ear against its hive" I am not quite sure but I think that the hive is a bee hive, which constantly have a buzzing sound coming from them. In the next stanza Collins asks us to drop a mouse into the poem. The stereotypical mouse finds and eats every last crumb of food in the house. Collins is saying be like the mouse milk the poem for everything that it is worth. We are then water-skiing over the top of the poem, gliding over it with ease. Collins then turns to what we as students do to a poem, we tie it up, torture it, and beat it till it gives us what we want.