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. 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. 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.

Collins uses a poetic form known as an enjambment that allows him to continue what he is expressing in 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 to see what it reveals. Therefore, Collins' use of a simile is his way of trying to convince the audience that just looking at the words in a poem is not good enough. He uses this technique 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. Readers 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 individuals 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, readers will be able to see themselves 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. An individual is put into an unfamiliar place and has to find his or her way through just like people have to with poems. He wants the readers to try and find the "light switch" that is going to help them 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 them to do the opposite. Collins wants readers to "waterski across the surface of a poem" (Collins 58). Now, he is telling the audience that although the inner context of a poem is significant, the outer part is just as important. After the full picture and mood from the interior has been achieved, one can get a completely different picture from the external surface. Collins also says that while the reader is waterskiing, the student could be "waving at the author's name on the shore" (Collins 58). The idea of the author not being present 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 is 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 the audience wants 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. They can frequently read the text of a poem without feeling all the senses that give people a mental image when reading a story. Then, readers try to create a meaning when they may not even understand the message. Collins wants his students and audience 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 they are trying to analyze it. He expresses that the students "begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means" (Collins 58). Audiences can read a text over and over but until time is taken to notice the sounds and sensations that are within the poem, individuals will not fully understand what it is trying to be conveyed. The purpose of the students "beating" the poem is to discover the message of it. Collins is telling his audience that people become so focused on trying to interpret the work that they 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 they have used to analyze works, and instead use his strategies. This whole idea of changing methods is why the title is so significant. The audience, in a sense, is being introduced to poetry for the first time by using new approaches. He wants his readers to have fun when reading a poem and by doing so, they will be able to notice more details and see the image that is hidden inside the text. If students stop attacking the work and instead get lost in the story, then they 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.

