Billy Collins was the United States Poet Laureate a few years ago and he had this great idea to start a website called Poetry 180 - a poem a day for high school students. It's an awesome site, and this poem is taken from there. I thought it was a great poem to include in April, National Poetry Month.

Introduction to Poetry

~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.