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

[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.