Poetry can often be a difficult form of literary work that is interpreted in a variety of ways. It often has multiple structures and expressions not familiar to readers and can occasionally be found confusing to an individual. In the "Introduction to Poetry," I believe that Billy Collins is trying to convey to his audience that poems should be looked at beyond the surface and interpreted in an unfamiliar way. The narrator of the poem is a teacher who is expressing how he strives to get his students to read poems on a different level instead of them trying to force a meaning out of the works.

Collins uses a poetic form known as an enjambment that allows him to continue a sentence over a line-break. This structure creates the idea of a teacher lecturing to his class. Collins is giving a list of ways he believes students should interpret a poem in each of the stanzas. He often breaks the sentence by using "or" right before he moves on to another strategy he wishes his students would read with. For instance "or press an ear against its hive" and "or walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch" (Collins 58). Collins designates specific line breaks in the poem so that each new strategy he suggests will be clear and thoroughly considered by his students. The use of enjambment creates the mood of reading beyond the surface.

In the first stanza, Collins asks his student to "take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide" (Collins 58). This action is his first example of how a poem should be read. The common way to analyze a poem is obviously not holding it in front of a light. However, Collins is trying to convince his audience that just looking at the words in a poem is not good enough. He uses a simile in this stanza so his students will hold the poem up like a "color slide." Objects are held up to color slides in order to reveal an image difficult to see without light. Collins wants his students to use this idea in order to see the hidden picture in a poem. You have to go beyond the normal routines and try to interpret the poem by using a foreign method. 

The second and third stanza also give us a similar example on how Collins wishes his students would read this type of literary work. When Collins creates a metaphor by stating "I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out" (Collins 58), he is conveying the message that readers should get lost in a poem the same way people get lost in time. They should wander with awe around the inside of a work and try to understand every detail. By doing so, we will be able to see ourselves inside of the poem. Collins also expresses that his students should "walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch" (Collins 58). Once again, he conveys an image of becoming astray. We are put into an unfamiliar place and have to find our way through just like we have to with poems. He wants the readers to try and find the "light switch" that is going to help us not only see and understand the room, but also the text.

In the two previous stanzas, Billy Collins wants the readers to look beyond the surface and go deeper into the poem. However, in the fourth stanza, he wants us to do the opposite. Collins wants us to "waterski across the surface of a poem" (Collins 58). Now, he is telling us that although the inner context of a poem is significant, the outer part is just as important. After we have gotten the full picture and mood from the interior, we can get a completely different picture from the external surface. Collins also says that while we are waterskiing, the student could be "waving at the author's name on the shore" (Collins 58). The idea of the author not being present with you while waterskiing is so that he will not play a key factor when reading the text. The author not playing an important role is also the major theme in "The Death of the Author" by Roland Barthes. Barthes expresses that "Once the Author is removed, the claim to decipher a text becomes quite futile" (Barthes 5). Both Barthes and Collins make a point to let the readers know the author only plays a small role in the poem. The concept of removing the author allows the audience to focus more on the literary work itself rather then trying to link it to the creator of the work. By doing so, the message behind the text will become clearer to comprehend. Therefore, the author's life and information should not be affiliated with how the text his interpreted. 

Collins changes the mood of the poem in the fifth stanza when he begins to refer to how readers actually perceive a poem. He states that we want to "tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it" (Collins 58). This is a more violent approach to allude to how students can often butcher a literary work. We can frequently read the text of a poem without feeling all the senses that give us a mental image when reading a story. Then, we try to create a meaning when we truthfully don't even understand the message. Collins wants us to dig deeper into each literary work in order to perceive the intended meaning.

The final stanza of "Introduction to Poetry" continues this idea of students becoming ruthless and unintentionally destroying a poem when we are trying to analyze it. He expresses that we "begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means" (Collins 58). Students can read a text over and over but until we take the time to notice the sounds and sensations that are within the poem, we will not fully understand what it is trying to convey. The purpose of us "beating" the poem is to discover the message of it. Collins is telling his audience that we become so focused on trying to interpret the work that we don't see the exciting elements that the poem is actually offering to its readers. 

The purpose of "Introduction to Poetry" is to point out the ineffective processes students use to interpret poems. Collins wants his students to convert from the old strategies we have used to analyze works, and instead use his strategies. This whole idea of changing methods is why the title is so significant. We, in a sense, are being introduced to poetry for the first time by using new approaches. He wants us to have fun when reading a poem and by doing so we will notice more details and will be able to see the image that is hidden inside the text. If we stop attacking the work and instead get lost in the story, then we will no longer have to force the true meaning. A new appreciation for poetry will arise when it is construed the way a poem should be.

