“They Don’t Like Poetry”

In Manhattan last week, I talked to a woman from Alabama who said her book club had read a Billy Collins poetry collection, and it was not a good meeting. “They don’t like poetry,” she explained.

• What poetry is, how it’s different from prose and journaling, how to write a healing poem

• Ways to use poetry to intentionally move our feelings toward acceptance, gratitude and empowerment

• How writing poetry helps overcome loneliness

• It’s pretentious, because poetic language isn’t how people speak

• It’s obscure, as if the author is intentionally trying to hide the meaning

• It’s boring, in a whirlwind world of scrolling and skimming

• One poem is read every day over the school’s public address system or in a homeroom (the name comes from the 180 days of the school year)

• There’s no discussion, and the teacher isn’t allowed to ask, "What does the blue sky mean?"

• There are no tests, and students aren't required to write essays about them

• Most are by living poets, avoiding the “dead poets” barrier that alienates many teens

• They start with a recognizable situation (like a breakup, a car ride, a grocery store)

• They are short enough to be read in about a minute, and clear enough to be understood on the first listen

Introduction to Poetry 

By Billy Collins

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.