april poetry

my friend Kristin is an English teacher, and so she pays attention to things like April being poetry appreciation month. So, every day in April she chooses a poem and sends it around on email. The poem today was appropriate...

"Introduction to Poetry"

by Billy Collins (U.S. Poet Laureate)

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.

After a long weekend of work, it's nice to remember that there's lots of things like poetry, English classes, commemorations, etc. going on all the time. I think people call that "perspective".