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.

-Billy Collins

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One of the greatest things about poetry is the self discovery that is involved while reading it. You are like the mouse sniffing your own way through the words while traveling to an answer that makes sense to you. Unfortunately there are some who believe that there is only one interpretation of any given piece of art. Don't believe them. Whatever you do stick to what you believe because it's the personal application that makes the poem alive for you. Once you enforce any meaning besides the one that makes sense to you on it, it dies.