Billy Collins Poetry Analysis

Poetry is a medium for many to vent emotions and frustrations on paper without really explaining what it is talking about. It has many ‘around the bush’ ways to tell people how they feel but often makes it difficult to be understood. They use imagery and figurative language to help describe their ideas, but a poem is just gibberish if it has no purpose for being written. One author by the name of Billy Collins explains what he believes poetry to be the one way he knows how, through the use of his own poetry.

Imagery is a very important aspect to poetry. It allows the author to visualize scenarios that go along with the reader’s purpose without specifically saying the reader’s purpose. It allows the reader to connect the dots and come to their own conclusion. Collins uses a ton of imagery to get is point across to the reader. One example from the passage is: “I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out.” In this sentence he gives us the picture of a mouse and a poem. He tells us to watch the mouse probe or look for a way out. The first thought one might come to is a mouse and a maze. Mice go through mazes as experiments and are a very common scene in movies and shows. He wants this connection to be drawn to how poetry works,

Without a purpose, there would not be a reason for the poem itself to not exist. The purpose of the poem is to tell the reader that poetry has deep meanings that cannot be derived with simple explanations and quick glances. One example would be: “walk inside the poem’s room and feel the walls for a switch.” This shows to the reader that the reader cannot just walk to a poem and expect immediate answers. The reader have to search for them in the words that are said. Another example is: “They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.” He is saying here that people get frustrated and start reprimanding the poem because they don’t want to go searching for the inside