Introduction to Poetry
Billy Collins
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, “Introduction to Poetry” from The Apple that Astonished Paris. Copyright 1988, 1996 by Billy Collins. Reprinted with the permission of the University of Arkansas Press.
••••••
What does this poem “really mean” ? Can you know its meaning in the sense of knowing what Billy Collins intended to convey ? Or is that even a sensible goal in reading a poem: to figure out what the poet really meant ?
What does the universe “really mean” ? Do you think it has any inherent meaning ? Is the universe here to serve a purpose ?
What does your life mean ? Were you put here to serve any purpose ? Most of us think of our lives as having purpose or a function. We get up in the morning looking to take steps to accomplish something.
The narrator of this poem, it appears, teaches or taught poetry. It sounds like one of the narrator’s goals was to get students to experience poems, to let poems happen to them rather than immediately wondering, "What was the poet thinking?" or "What is the teacher going to ask about it?" or worse, "What is going to be on the exam?"
Personally, I don’t wonder what the poet intended, for the simple reason that I know I can’t be expected to read the poet’s mind. But if that’s not a reasonable expectation, then what is?
After experiencing the poem, and thinking about what it makes me think about, and how it makes me feel, I usually get analytical, and try to interpret the poem, which to me means putting it into simpler words of my own to state what sense it makes. But I know I can’t do that without bringing something of myself to the poem. For example, if I find the poem interesting at all, it’s likely because I see some connection to my own interests or experiences, or maybe even some possibility of doing what I'm doing now: using the poem to teach or illuminate a concept I like to confront in my classes.
In the end, I don’t feel like I am seeking the poet’s meaning. I feel like I am making meaning instead of seeking it.
I think of a poem, a novel, a painting, a jazz piece, a scientific theory — all of them — as building materials for making meaning.
A poem is an opportunity to make meaning.
The Universe is an opportunity to make meaning.
A life is an opportunity to make meaning.
••••••
Walt Whitman, aware of such things, wrote a poem about such a spider.
Or maybe it's not about spiders at all.
••••••
A Noiseless Patient Spider
Walt Whitman
A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.
(https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45473/a-noiseless-patient-spider)
That’s Big Bang, Then What ?
I hope you found it interesting.
Now what ?
