This poem is a call to ACTION:
to see light through the color slide,
to listen for the sound of the hive,
to watch the mouse wander its way through the maze of the poem,
to feel around in the dark for a light switch,
to waterski and wave at the author who is standing at the shore
(patiently smiling, I imagine).
This poem is also a REMINDER:
to NOT tie the poem to a chair and to NOT torture a confession out of it.
Deconstructing poems to shreds of rudimentary grammar and mechanics, rhythm and rhyme scheme, always distracts the reader from the ability of poetry to resonate a wonderful thought provoking idea!
Reading poetry aloud helps us listen for the lovely sounds of language.
Reading poetry on the page helps us see the way words work together and empowers us to write splendid, strong sentences.
This poem, as example, is comprised of four sentences. FOUR—count them. Each begins with a capital letter and ends with a mark—four beautifully simple sentences broken into bite-sized fragments. Here, Billy Collins demonstrates how words are woven to phrases, phrases to complete ideas in the form of a sentence. Furthermore, when a poem is written to help us consider just exactly what a poem is, well that poem is a an ars poetica (click through to learn a little more).
Listen to Billy Collins narrate this wonderful poem here.
~Kimberly