Poems that Help Us Understand Poetry

"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 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.

Collins, Billy. “Introduction to Poetry.” The Apple that Astonished Paris. University of Arkansas Press, 1988, 2006.

Another poem about poetry, by Billy Collins, read aloud by the author

Not a link... but see pages 105-106 from Stephen King's On Writing for further exploration of the connection between writer and reader.

A link to the Poetry 180 website (Collins' foundation)



"Constantly Risking Absurdity"
By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
above a sea of faces
paces his way
to the other side of the day
performing entrachats
and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
and all without mistaking
any thing
for what it may not be
For he's the super realist
who must perforce perceive
taut truth
before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance
toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap
And he
a little charleychaplin man
who may or may not catch
her fair eternal form
spreadeagled in the empty air
of existence      

Watch a video of Charle Chaplin on the tightrope

Yes, it's possible for a poet/acrobat to fail miserably... for instance, Vogon poetry



"The Red Wheelbarrow"
By William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon a red wheel
barrow glazed with rain
water beside the white
chickens.  

Click here for another poem by William Carlos Williams

Click here for another poem that is solely about its own imagery



"Sonnet 18"
By William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.



"Ars Poetica" (excerpt)
By Paul Verlaine

Music first and foremost, and forever!

Let your verse be what goes soaring, sighing,

Set free, fleeing from the soul gone flying

Off to other skies and loves, wherever.

Let your verse be aimless chance, delighting

In good-omened fortune, sprinkled over

Dawn’s wind, bristling scents of mint, thyme, clover . . .

All the rest is nothing more than writing.