Reading Poetry

A Teacher Considers Why She Includes Poetry

I am a lover of poetry:
for the sounds,
for the shape on the page;
words turned to images
or a shaft of light.

A poem read aloud first thing:
a bell to invoke the spirit,
a bouquet of roses for beauty;
water in a pump
or a new pair of glasses.

The work of poetry:
to open the heart,
to stimulate imagination;
waves against walls
or an angle of insight.

LDL


From the Library of Congress Poetry 180 Project  Billy Collins on how to read a poem, not instructions, but analogies that evoke other experiences.

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.

This is NOT how American Conversation students responded to the poems they read for today!