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 the 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 is a well established American poet.  He was born on March 22, 1941 in New York.  When he was young, his mother would make him recite verses on a number of different subjects.  Through this, he learned to love words.  He is a distinguished professor at Lehman College, which is evident that he teaches in the poem. 
     The structure of the poem is free verse.  There's no structured rhyme scheme, lines in each stanza, or fixed meter. 
     In the first five stanzas, Collins is trying to get his audience to experience the poem.  He wants them to use different senses to find the poem's meaning.  He also wants his audience to relate the author to the poem. 
     The last two stanzas tell what they do instead.  His audience dissects the poem, and tries to find the one "right" meaning to the poem.  This is where ambiguity comes into play.  I think our class might need a reminder of our "Word of the Year."

simple straightforward ambiguity

Cottonmouth Country

Louise Gluck

Hatteras, NC

Fish bones walked the waves off Hatteras.

And there were other signs

That death wooed us, by water, wooed us
By land: among the pines
An uncurled cottonmouth that rolled on moss
Reared in the polluted air.
Birth, not death, is the hard loss.
I know. I also left a skin there. 

     In the first line, she makes a reference to Hatteras.  Hatteras is located on the coast of North Carolina.  Cape Hatteras is often referred to as "Graveyard of the Atlantic" because so many ships have gotten lost there.  I also thought that the first line contained some irony when it said, "Fish bones walked the waves", because fish are more the swimming type, not walking.  This line, as well as two through six, refers to death.  Another sign of death she gave was the cottonmouth, which is a deadly snake.  Line seven is saying that life can be worse than death, and also brings change.  In the last line, Gluck states that she also left a skin there.  I took this as she lost somebody close to her, but instead of blaming death for it, she blames life for giving her that person to begin with.  

The Book

Miller Williams

I held it in my hands while he told me the story.

He had found it in a fallen bunker,
a book for notes with the pages blank.
He took it to keep for a sketchbook and diary.

He learned years later, when he showed the book
to an old bookbinder, who paled, and stepped back
a long step and told him what he held,
what he had laid the days of his life in.
It's bound, the binder said, in human skin.

I stood turning it over in my hands,
turning it in my head. Human skin.

What child did this skin fit? What man, what

woman?

Dragged still full of its flesh from what dream?

Who took it off the meat? Some other one

who stayed alive by knowing how to do this?

I stared at the changing book and a horror grew,

I stared and a horror grew, which was, which is,

how beautiful it was until I knew.

     The structure of the poem is as if a story is being told.  In lines one through four, he starts out by explaining how they got the book.  Although he never specifies who "he" is, I automatically assumed it was his grandfather because they are best known for telling stories.  In the third stanza, he goes on to tell the disturbing truth about the book.  I found the structure of the next three stanzas was interesting.  They are all different thoughts of his about the book.  When I read this, it helped me see the thought process he was going through.  These stanzas also show the innocence of him, as if he was a child when this happened.  The last stanza was a loss of innocence for him.  He realized that something so great could turn out to be something horrible.  I also took from the last stanza that knowledge isn't always enlightening, and can be destructive to ourselves.

Untitled

Stephan Crane

In the desert
I saw the creature, naked, bestial,
Who squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said:  "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter-bitter," he answered;
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart.

     My first reaction to this poem was it is very different and weird, but I like it.  In lines one through five, Crane creates a disturbing image of a beastly creature eating it's own heart.  I pictures a demonic caveman type ceature.  Then in lines six through ten he describes the conversation he had with the creature.  This made me think of "Heart of Darkness".  Humans are often drawn to dark and terrible things, and even though this may sound horrible to some, it is our nature.  In line six, he asks, "Is it good, friend?" I wasn't quite sure why he added the friend in there.  Perhaps something to discuss in class...