A diversion from the game plan...

Ok, so I am going to cheat today. This is not what I expected to do, but I read this poem and couldn't help myself. I feel this is what I do with my poetry most of the time, and this has really made me think. That's a really good thing and hopefully I can do more as a result. Anyway, I discovered this from Poetry 180, a website by the Library of Congress that provides a poem a day for the school year. This is the first poem in the list and it couldn't be more true.

I will admit right away that I do not have permission to publish this poem, but since no one views this yet, and I do not collect money for this blog, I feel I can get away with it. Also, I am trying to credit the hell out of the author and where I obtained the information. If you click on the title of this blog you'll be linked to the website. Please do not sue me if you have the power!

Here it is from Poetry 180:

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.

from The Apple that Astonished Paris, 1996
University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, Ark.
Copyright 1988 by Billy Collins.
All rights reserved.