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.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
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3 comments:
poetry that doesn't rhyme? Who believes in that?
everybody except us... to the ancients, any poetry that actually rhymed was considered base and unsophisticated
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
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