Today, many people do not know how to truly appreciate the art known as poetry. It is hard to understand at times, and people have a hard time grasping the meaning behind the sophisticated words. This idea is illustrated in Billy Collins’ poem, “Introduction to Poetry.”
One pattern that I noticed Billy Collins used in his poem was the use of metaphors. He uses metaphors such as, “I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe its way out.” (Collins) Collins compares reading poetry to a mouse finding its way out of a maze. He also compares poetry to waterskis and listening to hives. He uses objects and actions that seem to have nothing to do with poetry into his very own poem. The reason that Collins uses metaphors in his poem is to give his own poem some complexity and deeper meaning. He is also trying to convey how every poem is complex, seeing how you have to do so many different things to grasp what the poem is trying to say.
Something that disrupted my previous understanding about poetry was how complex Billy Collins introduces poetry. Previously. I understood poetry as having complex sounding words on a piece of paper. After reading “Introduction to Poetry,” now I understand that poetry should not be as simple as I have previously thought. Poetry needs to be complex and complicated to understand for many reasons. One reason is that, if it is not complex, poetry would be easy to understand like a children’s picture book. Poetry is not meant to be easily understood. Not everyone should be able to understand a poem after reading it only once. If it does, then it could not be considered poetry. Another reason that poetry should be complex is so people can train themselves to think about what the author of a poem is trying to depict. Complex poetry is able to give rise to unique thought processes from the reader. Readers are able to get many different ideas from reading a complex poem. New ideas could sprout from one idea to another. However, complexity has different meanings to different people.
One one side, people may enjoy the complexity of understanding poetry and searching for the hidden meanings behind a poem. However, I can see how people do not enjoy poetry. Poetry is hard to understand for some people. It could get frustrating trying to understand the poem. It is even more frustrating for people to not understand the bigger picture and the hidden message behind all of the words. People would “tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it.” (Collins) People want the easy way out of reading poetry. They think that the answer is written in bold and capital letters for them. The answer should not be easily given out to everyone. If poetry was specifically made to be easily understood, then the world may probably not be the same as it is today.
The complexity is an important element of poetry. What if the world got rid of that complexity so that poetry could be easily interpreted? Poetry is a way for people to share their unique thought processes and to incite even more meaningful thoughts to be born. Without poetry, then unique thinking will not be as prominent. Sure, there may be books and novels, but poetry is the best and easiest way to share ideas. People would be stuck thinking in a monotonous way. Everyone would have the same ideas. Nothing would have the unique deeper meanings that exist within poetry today. Without unique thought processes, then everyone would be the same. Our society would be a dull grey color, instead of the myriad of colors that our society is today. Poetry exists to give people a color that corresponds to their thoughts.
Billy Collins writes “Introduction to Poetry” to introduce the complexities of poetry to his readers. His extensive use of metaphors illustrates the complexities of his own poem and poetry in general. Poetry has a reason that it should be complex. It makes it different from any other sort of writing out there in the world. It also helps people train their ability to think. It gives rise to different perspectives and unique minds in society. Without poetry, then our society would be monotonous, without any color or advanced minds. As Collins illustrates, you should not force an answer out of poetry. You need to work your way through the poetry, dissecting each of its elements one by one. This way, we can deepen our own knowledge and advance our own thought prowess.
