Thursday, July 20, 2006

I didn't know that I'd say it, but Billy Collins should be pretty smug.

This is a poem of his. I especially like The Art of Drowning.

Introduction to Poetry

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.

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