Introduction to Poetry - Billy Collins

Collins' poem is a frustration towards the lack of creativity and feeling that his students have while reading poetry. Collins uses four of the five senses to explain, through imagery, what his students should do while reading a poem to experience what the author has written. Most importantly, Collins wants his students to feel the poem: "...walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch." He wants them to find the emotion of the poem, rather than analyze it for the real meaning: "They being beating it with a hose to find out what it really means."  According to Collins, the real meaning of a poem is what you discover while reading it.