One Poem at a Time -30-

Lucia:

We at Portrait have loved this poem-posting-project, and we hope it’s helped us all stop reaching for the hose when presented with verse.

Introduction to Poetry
by Billy Collins
from Sailing Around the Room: New and Selected Poems

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.