Billy Collins Introduction To Poetry Analysis
Luke Gladen-Kolarsky
Hensley
Acc. American Lit
September 19, 2017
What’s brown and sticky? A stick.
In his poems “Marginalia” and “Introduction to Poetry,” Billy Collins uses metaphors to argue that students who annotate without real engagement detract from their experience of reading literature whereas those who annotate for their own satisfaction become more fulfilled.
Collins’ “Marginalia” and “Introduction to Poetry” show the ways writing can be enjoyed when one annotates for one’s own contentment. Collins talks about the various ways he wants students to interact with poems, saying in “Introduction to Poetry” that he wants them to “Waterski / across the surface of a poem” (Collins, 9-10). Expressing the poem as a body of water highlights …show more content…
In “Introduction to Poetry”, Collins discusses one of the ways students currently interact with assigned literary composition, saying “All they want to do / is tie the poem to a chair with rope” (Collins, 12-13). The aggressive constraint in this phrase clashes with the previous, more gentle metaphors to show the distinction in approaches between the teacher and student, and how the student only searches for what they are expected to find. The cruelty and brutality of using rope to tie something to a chair evinces the ways students’ active aggression towards a piece of literature negatively affects the way one reads it. He says they want to “torture a confession out of it,” (Collins, 14) which depicts that students often don’t pay attention to what the author wants the reader to get from it, but instead only look for the most obvious meanings - ones which can be elicited by forceful interrogation. That being said, Collins also discusses the passiveness with which students might approach literary texts in “Marginalia”. He states that “Students are more modest / needing to leave only their splayed footprints / along the shore of the page” (Collins, 17-19). Here, Collins suggests that students can also be passive and distant when annotating writing, which also has negative effects. He implies that their shallow analysis makes their annotations as impermanent and unaffecting as footprints on a beach, which will be washed away with the next tide. This lack of depth makes the annotations irrelevant and fleeting, and likewise fails as a methodology of reading as much as the aggressive approach which demands specific and fixed
Hensley
Acc. American Lit
September 19, 2017
What’s brown and sticky? A stick.
In his poems “Marginalia” and “Introduction to Poetry,” Billy Collins uses metaphors to argue that students who annotate without real engagement detract from their experience of reading literature whereas those who annotate for their own satisfaction become more fulfilled.
Collins’ “Marginalia” and “Introduction to Poetry” show the ways writing can be enjoyed when one annotates for one’s own contentment. Collins talks about the various ways he wants students to interact with poems, saying in “Introduction to Poetry” that he wants them to “Waterski / across the surface of a poem” (Collins, 9-10). Expressing the poem as a body of water highlights …show more content…
In “Introduction to Poetry”, Collins discusses one of the ways students currently interact with assigned literary composition, saying “All they want to do / is tie the poem to a chair with rope” (Collins, 12-13). The aggressive constraint in this phrase clashes with the previous, more gentle metaphors to show the distinction in approaches between the teacher and student, and how the student only searches for what they are expected to find. The cruelty and brutality of using rope to tie something to a chair evinces the ways students’ active aggression towards a piece of literature negatively affects the way one reads it. He says they want to “torture a confession out of it,” (Collins, 14) which depicts that students often don’t pay attention to what the author wants the reader to get from it, but instead only look for the most obvious meanings - ones which can be elicited by forceful interrogation. That being said, Collins also discusses the passiveness with which students might approach literary texts in “Marginalia”. He states that “Students are more modest / needing to leave only their splayed footprints / along the shore of the page” (Collins, 17-19). Here, Collins suggests that students can also be passive and distant when annotating writing, which also has negative effects. He implies that their shallow analysis makes their annotations as impermanent and unaffecting as footprints on a beach, which will be washed away with the next tide. This lack of depth makes the annotations irrelevant and fleeting, and likewise fails as a methodology of reading as much as the aggressive approach which demands specific and fixed