As people who study the written word, who go to the temple of the page and set before it the offering of our attention in hopes of receiving the gift of understanding, it can sometimes become difficult to keep in sight the reason we originally went there. We all have our own reasons but for me, to go to poetry is to find joy and connection. Within the academic system poetry has become a sort of challenge. We are set upon poetry to discover its meaning, to revel in its transcendental understanding of our world and to squeeze that understanding like juice from an orange. There is a reason for this of course. Developing the tools of interpretation makes us better readers, and in some ways deepens our relationship with poetry, but it can also mean losing sight of the joy that comes with poetry in the first place.

In his poem “Introduction to Poetry” Billy Collin’s shares some similar concerns he has with the state of poetry in the classroom.

Introduction to Poetry
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 waterski
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.
Reading poetry is an experiment of walking into a new world. We must respect that world, hold it securely but gently as not to bruise the skin. We have to live with poetry, or else what’s the point?
-Tim Caston