Poetic Forms (Part 1)

Billy Collins, a past poet laureate of the USA, once wrote a poem called "Introduction to Poetry" describing students wanting to tie a poem to a chair to beat a confession out of it. Instead, the poet asks students to hold a poem up to the light, or put an ear up to it - to feel around for its meaning.

Billy Collins has taught poetry for over thirty years. In this poem, he advocates a sensual taking-in of a poem, rather than paraphrasing, or stripping the poem of its lyric quality to get down to the who, what, when, where, and why. He warns you against torturing the poem to extract meaning.

Collins' approach is kinder to the poem, and perhaps kinder to yourself, too. In this lesson, you'll begin to look at the pure variety of form in poetry, and learn how form contributes to the meaning of a poem, keeping with an approach of appreciation, rather than dissection.