Apparently I’m on a poetry kick. There is poetry clawing at the inside of my skull, or pecking, hoping to crack me open so it can escape. But I gird myself with reminisces and meta.

This is by Billy Collins, one of my favorite poets.

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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