From: Charles Bayless <charles.bayless_at_gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2014 11:31:22 -0400

Billy Collins has a pertinent poem on this issue, titled Introductions to Poetry, from his collection, The Apple That Astonished Paris. I love his distinction between the joyful exploration of a poem and the monomaniacal pursuit of An Answer.

 

The poem begins,

 

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.

 

And ends

 

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.

 

The whole poem is at Poetry Foundation, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176056

 

 

CB


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Received on Sat 19 Apr 2014 10:32:11 AM CDT