"Introduction to Poetry" by Billy Collins

I love teaching this poem to students because it causes them to understand that in order to truly understand a poem, you have to examine it from all angles, but they shouldn't look too deeply into a poem that they message its message.
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"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.

-Billy Collins