Billy Collins Introduction To Poetry Analysis

Understanding and interpreting poetry is a learned skill that is unique to each individual. The meaning, tones, and significance of a poem can vary from person to person, as well as each time you read the same poem. Poems evoke emotions from the reader, and different moods can allow the same reader to interpret the poem’s meaning in a different light each time. In Billy Collins’s “Introduction to Poetry” the theme he utilizes is education; he seeks to educate others on how to read and interpret the meaning of a poem so that you can truly understand what the author was trying to emit onto the page. The entire poem is built upon irony; it is devoted to educate those reading the poem on how to read a poem properly, through the use of a poem.

Collins’s goal is to teach those reading poems to open their thoughts and utilize all senses to dig deep inside the words, rather than reading the words of poems at face value. “I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him find his way out”(Collins). Collins is urging you to get lost in the words of a poem. Poems can have a variety of different meanings, and the object is to find the one that speaks to you as a reader. He compares waterskiing to reading a poem; asking you to be free from any limitations, experience the words, and enjoy the ride of the poem. He refers to listening to a bee hive; listen to the words of the poem, you don’t have to see inside the hive to know that there is honey being made. Reading a poem is the same, you don’t have to see the complete picture and interpret each word, you only need to listen with open ears and let it speak to you. Collins also utilized similes to compare unlike things, “take a poem and hold it up to a light like a color slide”(Collins), view the poem as if is a transparent film slide. You can see the picture that it is painting, but the words are not being spoken; they are left to your imagination, let the poem speak to