Before I Get On To

... Marianne Moore, I'd like to quote some Billy Collins. Can't help it. I just enjoy his stuff so much:

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 water-ski
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 by beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

This reminds me of when I was teaching Spanish and the beginning students were still stumbling through the idea of conjugation (of which there is precious little in English). "Just keep stumbling around in the dark room," I told them, "soon your eyes will be accustomed to the dark and you will see a crack of light around the door. Grope around and find the handle! Then you can open that door and step out into the light and it will become clear to you!" And they laughed at me.
One day, one girl said, "Oh, Profesora! I think I see the light! I think I see the light!" and started getting all excited. Or maybe she was just kidding.