tomorrow marks a new semester! have a poem.

[lotesse]

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.

Comments

[theprimrosepath]

How serrendipitously appropriate - this poem is in the front of my anthology for next semester's class. :) What are you taking/teaching, come tomorrow's semester?

[lotesse]

Lovely!

I get to go back to the 19th century this semester - George Eliot ahoy! - but alas am still teaching bloody freshman comp. What about you?

[theprimrosepath]

Yay, 19th century! I got so lucky with my 19th century survey course, my frist semester; it was taught by the head of the women's studies department, and was thus an entirely different reading list and perspective that I would otherwise have gotten.

Last semester was freshman comp; this semester, I'm moving on to - wait for it.... - freshman literature! Fiction, plays, and poetry - ohh, am I looking forward to poetry. :D

[lotesse]

Oh, I envy you! I like teaching lit soooo much better than comp!

[amelia-petkova.livejournal.com]

YES. Billy Collins is awesome.

I still remember what a relief it was when I got to college and we were discussing poems instead of analyzing the shit out of them. (You'll laugh at this: up until 12th grade, I loathed English class with a passion.)

[lotesse]

No I won't - I believe every word! I dropped out of 10th grade honors english after a series of pitched battles with the teacher involving symbolism, allegory, reader response, and The Grapes of Wrath. Not good! I started taking lit classes over at the community college across the street, which was better.

[amelia-petkova.livejournal.com]

In undergrad I took several English courses from an elderly (but still insanely active) professor who was also my adviser. Once, a student mentioned "dissecting poetry" in some context or another, and the professor went into this long rant about how dissecting poetry killed it, and so many high school English classes do that too much, and how discussing poetry needs to be taught in an enjoyable manner. It was glorious.