National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month. As an English teacher with a bachelors in English and a masters in English Education, and simply of lover of all literature, I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge and celebrate this event. So, in honor of National Poetry Month, I am going to be posting poems on my blog throughout the month. Some of them are my favorites and some will be new to me, too. Some of them challenge me to think deeper than I am used to doing and some of them are just plain fun. So...indulge yourself a bit, challenge yourself a bit, and don't be too fearful to allow yourself to enjoy a little bit of poetry.

The poem for today is by Billy Collins, a former Poet Laureate. He is a master poet and these are his thoughts about what people do to poetry. I encourage you to follow his advice in the first 5 stanzas as you read any piece of poetry, and try to avoid what most people do, as stated in the last 2 stanzas. Enjoy!

Introduction to Poetry

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.