Poetic Techniques In Introduction To Poetry By Billy Collins

Billy Collins expresses that poetry is more than just a written piece of work but something that is supposed to be felt in his poem called “Introduction to Poetry.” Collins shows us that meaning of his poem by several examples that he gives throughout the poem. One of those examples are shown when he says “I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide” (Collins, Billy). In that example, Collin is asking that you examine the poem to find its meaning like you examine a color slide against light. Collins knows that when you have a color slide, you will examine it very closely against the light, and he wants you to examine the poems as closely as you examine the color slide. Collins shows us that he wants us to jump

into a poem and feel around to figure out what the meaning of the poem in his next example. His next example was, “walk inside the poem’s room and feel the walls for a light switch” (Collins, Billy). Collins is showing us that he wants us to jump in and feel around for the meaning of the poem like we feel around a room looking for the light and not just skim around the poem. Another example that Collins used was “I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author’s name on the shore” (Collins, Billy). Collins is saying that he wants us to cover the whole surface of the poem and understand the meaning like a skier covers the surface of the water. He even wants you to cover the authors name on the shore. The last example that Collins gives us in his poem is “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). In this example, we learn that Collins says that all we do is tie the poem down and beat and torture the meaning out of a poem instead of diving deep into the poem to find the meaning.
Collins uses several poetic devices to get his meaning of “Introduction to Poetry” across to us.

Collins himself was the speaker and author of this poem. When learn that Collins himself was the author and speaker of the poem when he says, “I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide” (Collins, Billy). When Collins says I ask them, it shows that he is the author and speaker. An example that I find is the huge difference between the tone of the last two paragraphs between the rest of the paragraph. Collins uses a cheerful tone in his first five paragraphs of the poem when he is explaining how people should examine a poem, but then changes to an unpleasant tone when he starts explaining how people examine a poem. This poetic device helps us understand how Collins feels about how we examine a poem and how he really wants us to examine a poem. Another poetic device Collins used in his poem is metaphors. A good example of a metaphor is “walk inside the poem’s room and feel the walls for a light switch” (Collins, Billy). The reason that is a metaphor is because a poem is compared to a room. All the metaphors used throughout the poem helps us understand just how much Collins wants us to dive in deep and examine a poem to understand the meaning of the

poem.