The first poem that launches to the Poetry 180 project is a poem by the laureate himself, aptly titled “Introduction to Poetry.” The poem reveals a fascinating drama of just what a poem can do. It consists of seven unrimed verse paragraphs of varying lengths.
First Verse Paragraph: “I ask them to take a poem”
In the first verse paragraph, consisting of three lines, the speaker who is beginning a lesson on poetry announces that he “ask[s] [the students] to take a poem / and hold it up to the light / like a color slide.” Metaphorically, the speaker/teacher is implying that a poem contains images that may be viewed if light is passed through it.
“Light” refers to the simple act of using the eyes to read the poem closely, as one would look closely when peering through a “color slide.” He also implies that the poem has color, but again the student must look closely to see it.
Second Verse Paragraph: “or press an ear against its hive”
The second verse paragraph consists of only one line, but it shifts it metaphor from the eyes looking through a color slide to the ears “press[ing] against” a beehive. He asks the students to listen to the poem carefully, as they would do if they were curious to hear the humming of bees busy inside their hive making honey.
The teacher/speaker is thus averring that poetry holds sweetness that can be heard, as well as colorful images that can be seen, and he encourages his students to look and listen carefully in order to perceive these pleasurable realities.
Third Verse Paragraph: “I say drop a mouse into a poem”
Then the speaker/teacher becomes a science teacher instructing the students to place a rodent inside the poem, as one would do in a maze, and then see how the mouse behaves. The “mouse” is the initial interpretation that the student will venture: what if such and such means such and such, then what happens.
Fourth Verse Paragraph: “or walk inside the poem's room”Then the speaker offers another trick for teasing out an interpretation; he asks the students to “walk inside the poem's room / and feel the walls for a light switch.” They are to immerse their minds fully in the words to try to detect the connection that reveals the poem’s meaning.
Fifth Verse Paragraph: “I want them to waterski”
The speaker/teacher then explains that he wants his students “to waterski / across the surface of a poem / waving at the author's name on the shore.” He wants them to continue playing with the poem, giving perhaps a bit of recognition to the poet, but not allowing the poet to dictate how the poem will click inside the student’s head.
Sixth Verse Paragraph: “But all they want to do”
Then the speaker laments that instead of these colorful and useful ways of looking at and engaging a poem, “all they want to do / is tie the poem to a chair with rope / and torture a confession out of it.” The students seem to think that the poem is a thief or other culprit that deliberately tries to thwart their understanding.
Seventh Verse Paragraph: “They begin beating it with a hose”
This attitude is so pervasive that the speaker reiterates this belligerent strategy. Once they have the poem tied to the chair, they begin “beating it with a hose,” to try to get it to yield up the bounty that would be graciously offered, if only they would treat the poem with gentle playfulness and loving attention.
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