daily poem: Introduction to Poetry / Billy Collins

I love Billy Collins, one of those rare genuinely popular poets who has a real evangelistic approach to poetry, and who manages to be funny and lyrical and very accessible. His brilliant Poetry 180 project is all about getting poetry-for-pleasure into the classroom, with a hand-picked collection of 180 poems - one for every day of the school year - selected on the basis of “their willingness to deliver immediate injections of pleasure.” It's also a great introduction to contemporary poets, including many not especially famous. You can read the poems over here and there's a handy teacher's guide here.


Introduction to Poetry
Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a colour 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.


Buy Poetry 180 here. // Buy 180 More here.

Photo by marrian.