Summary Of Billy Collins 'Poem' How I Discovered Poetry

Poetry

In Billy Collins poem, “Introduction to Poetry”, Billy basically inspire us to have fun with poetry instead of over looking it because lack of understanding. He conveys this message in “Introduction to Poetry” by writing:

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 beating it with a hose to find out what it really means. (Collins 356)

Collins used his figure of speech throughout his poem to help interpret and enjoy the experience. Marilyn Nelson’s approach is not to different from Collins’, she used middle diction in the poem “How I Discovered Poetry”. Marilyn illustrates how she found her passion for poetry while her all white class found it uninteresting. In “How I Discovered Poetry” Marilyn illustrates this by writing:

Bob Hicok combined humor with verbal irony in “Making it in poetry”.

He refers to that fact that poetry can make you money, for example: The young teller at the credit union asked why so many small checks from universities? Because I write poems I said. (Hicok 438)

As I have explicated each of these poems I can say that they all have enhanced my knowledge. I didn’t know that poetry had so many elements to it; but, I find myself feeling intrigued. Irony, style and tone played a significant part in my understanding of the poems. The tone of some of the poems helped me to get a better understanding of the author’s attitude towards the subject. Collectively, all of the poems have explained what poetry is. Poetry is so broad; and there are many approaches you could take to create meaningful poetry, and that’s what makes poetry so exquisite and