Alexis Reed: Introduction to Poetry Blog Post #1

Question #8:

In Billy Collins' “Introduction to Poetry” Collins' uses various forms of imagery such as auditory image and kinesthetic imagery to communicate that readers spend more time tearing a poem apart in order to find the meaning and missing out on the experience of truly reading a poem. Collins implies that his students are much more focused with “…beating it with a hose in order to find out the meaning” rather than “…waterski[ing] across the poem’s surface.”  The kinesthetic imagery produces an image of students physically beating a poem in order to discover the meaning hidden within the poem. The second kinesthetic imagery lets readers picture a student water-skiing across the poems words, letting the reader have an understanding of what the words mean. His students want to hurry and find the meaning without taking the slow steps in order to find the meaning. In order to motivate his students to take the steps to find the meaning, he tells them to “…press an ear against its hive.” Collins might be hinting that before analyzing the poem, students need to “hear” the poem so they can have a sense of what the poem is about. Collins then tells his students to “…walk inside the poem’s room and feel the walls for a light switch.” This implies he wants his students to get a feel for the poem before forcing a confession out of the poem. Collins allows his readers to picture the sense of urgency his students feel by generating the image of students tying the poem to a chair and "...torturing a confession out of it." Collins implies that he does not want his students to feel a sense of urgency when reading a poem but instead to have an extraordinary experience reading poems.