The Conflict of the Frustration of Poets in Introduction to Poetry, a Poem by Billy Collins

Billy Collin’s poem, Introduction to Poetry, dramatizes conflict of poets’ frustration when their work is overanalyzed instead of getting enjoyed. Far more specifically, this poem’s narrator stresses the author’s intent of delivering open-ended messages when writing poetry although audiences fail to appreciate poetry appropriately, as an alternative seeing them as intellectual burdens. This struggle is shown by the shocking personifications and imagery in the final two stanzas of “[tying] the poem to a chair with rope/and [torturing] a confession out of it… and [torturing] a confession out of it.” These very charged descriptions show how disappointed poets grow to be when they comprehend that their poetry stresses student readers in understanding the poems rather than taking time to get pleasure from the poems.

The initial and second stanzas give sensory imagery to reflect the variety of poetry there is in the planet. By using visual imagery to note that students “hold [poems] up to the light/like a colour slide” or auditory imagery like “[pressing] an ear against its hive,” the poem’s persona illustrates how subjective poems can be. Related to how there are millions of colors, there are millions of interpretations for poems and one ought to be excited by all these possibilities instead of draining oneself to locate the “one accurate which means.” This painful but pointless search for the supposed a single accurate meaning that literary persons prescribe is further outlined by comparing readers’ analyses to “[dropping a mouse] and watching him probe his way out.” This metaphor properly explains how lost readers are when examining poetry. Presently, poetry is a labyrinth to a lot of readers, which can be great for rereading and trying new choices to discover new interpretations like “[feeling] the walls for a light switch” but must also be avoided due to the fact of the confusion audiences dislike. The specific usage of “switch” emphasizes how poems can change which means and expose new details the a lot more instances 1 reads it.

The poem’s persona directly states their purpose for poetry by “[wanting] them [the readers] to waterski across the surface of a poem.” The diction of “waterski” demonstrates how audiences must get pleasure from the poem for what it is, on-the-surface like a wave, and under-the-surface like the ocean but not systemically dive deep into the ocean proper away. Readers need to wade via the waves for a while very first and completely absorb the poem’s beauty first and then take on the entertaining of individualistic evaluation, as highlighted by the comparison to the thrilling sport of waterskiing.

The poem finally functions distinctive structural characteristics such as multiple short stanzas and cost-free verse. The lack of rigid organization or adherence to a rhyme scheme might imply the freeness that poets want to express in their operates, that every single poem can have multiple meanings and ought to not be boiled down into 1 distinct evaluation, unlike how some teachers or professors would force students to “dig deeper” for meaning that was never ever really there. The narrator, who probably reflects Collins himself, desires to reveal that their poems are not meant to trick readers but to provide a sense of enjoyment. It is even merely feels free to skip lines so often rather than maintaining the long complete sentences necessary by correct English grammar. All in all, this poem conveys that making effortful unnecessary reaches as to what each line means can disrespect the goal of a poem, which is to find one’s personal which means for leisure.