Poetry 101: First, untie it.

While in Kentucky earlier this summer, Brett was able to attend a poetry reading by Billy Collins. Good man that he is, Brett brought back for me a signed copy of The Trouble with Poetry: And Other Poems which begins, "The birds are in their trees, the toast is in the toaster, and the poets are at their windows."

Now, as I prepare to share with my students (future teachers) how to teach poetry and incorporate it into their English/ Language Arts classroom, I return to Collins and the idea behind his Poetry 180 project which, simply put, exposes students to a poem a day for the entire school year. Here is the poem he starts with, one of his own:

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.