Poetry Two
I had so much fun posting that earlier poem for Blogger’s (Silent) Poetry Reading, I decided to do another: (Heck, I enjoyed this last year, too.)
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 water-ski
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.
(Yep, folks–how many of you had English teachers more or less kill the beauty of poetry for you by forcing you to take them apart, syllable by syllable. Show of hands? Anyone?)
Anyway. Luckily I had this poetry thing to fall back on, because really, I have almost nothing to talk about tonight.
Okay, really, nothing to talk about.
CROSSING
by Deborah Tall
“Islands are great places,” he’d say,
“Till you want to get off.”
And he should know, driving a wedge of a boat
in and out of that channel, decades.
But who knew better
than the horses who were
lowered into the hold
on a pulley strung from the mast,
the horses who always gave up
their thrashing when,
hooves finally lifted free of the pier,
they swung full-bodied
in salt air, swallowing sure catastrophe.
They never walked the same on mainland.
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Tannenbaum.
House Calls
None
I only had 3 years of english (my third language) and 2 years I had Mr Archer who was very cool and the karate teacher and all the girls drooled all over him… and his way of teaching us english??? Stick a video tape of a movie in the machine and have a nap while we watched the movie.
And in Dutch (mothertongue) we had so many other things to do that we never really did a lot of poetry. There’s not much poetry (in the classical sense) that I like or care for. The only poem that I like is the one by Auden (is that his name?), the one that is in 4 Weddings and a Funeral.
For me song lyrics are poetry, especially contemporary country songs…
Oops wasn’t planning on writing such a long post LOL.
Have a great weekend, Eva – who’s got her first spindle and is hoping to figure it out some this weekend
That’s a great poem. I’ll have to remember to read that one to the boys when they start studying poetry.
Very nice!
I had quite a few teachers who were into butchering literature. Fortunately I had some that were the opposite, and their influence was stronger!
Billy Collins has some great stuff, doesn’t he?
Gads. Tons. It’s all they ever wanted to do. How could I possibly know what the author intended by that phrase? Why don’t you ask him? He’s dead? Well, then, I guess you’ll just have to continue reading to figure it out. Or, maybe, just maybe, it means exactly what it says, and nothing else. Ha! I hated those classes. Absolutely hated them. Can you tell? It’s amazing I came out of school still enjoying to read. LOL