Tuesday, March 31, 2009

i did not write this. not even a little.

Introduction To Poetry, by 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.

"It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we."
- GK Chesterton. Because he sums God's joy up much better than I.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

poetry that doesn't rhyme? Who believes in that?

Stephen said...

everybody except us... to the ancients, any poetry that actually rhymed was considered base and unsophisticated

Julie said...

stephen, I don't know if you ever check my comments after you post - but if you do, you might appreciate this Billy Collins poem: Reading An Anthology Of Chinese Poems Of The Sung Dynasty, I Pause To Admire The Length And Clarity Of Their Titles