I'll be smiling all day from the great imagery in that poem! Thanks!

The last couple years I taught high school freshmen, I used a site called Poetry 180 as a source for reading them a poem a day. Collins created the site with 180 poems he thought young people would appreciate, one for each academic school day. This was always the first one, and they loved it. The image of beating a poem to death through over analysis is wonderful.

I love that poem! It's perfect for the end of Poetry Month.

How it works, here in the House of Poetry.

Every week we have an “official” poem to read and talk about. These poems are suggested by our members. I keep the list, and post one each week. Whenever the list starts getting a little short, I’ll put out a call for poems .

Aside from the official list, anyone may post a poem at any time. Or post a note concerning any aspect of poetry—reading, writing, selling, ideas, books, articles...

Don’t be hesitant about commenting on a poem. I think in school we were browbeaten into wringing the “correct” meaning out of a poem. Poetry shouldn’t be intimidating.

A poet writes a poem and sends it out into the big world. It’s a little like raising a kid—you do your best to do it right, but ultimately kids will become who they will become. And a poem will mean what it means to each individual reader.

Lets take some advice from Billie Collins, former Poet Laureate of the US.

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.

from The Apple that Astonished Paris, 1996
University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, Ark
*************

Let this be a hose-beating free zone.