Billy Collins: Introduction To Poetry

I interpreted Billy Collins “Introduction To Poetry” as advice on how to write a poem and not how to analyze one. The idea of tying a poem down to a chair and trying to make it confess is how I imagine myself when I am assigned to write a poem, I feel that I cannot write a poem when it is assigned to me but instead I need to have it flow naturally; however, once on of my classmates explained it was about analyzing a poem it also made sense. I believe that it has been engrained into students that you have to find the deeper meaning a poem, and what I believe Collins is trying to express is that he does not want his students to go deep but instead understand the poem on its surface “I want them to water-ski across the surface of a poem” but after they understand what the poem means on the surface, that is when Collins wants his students to discover the deeper meaning of the poem.