Meaning Of A Poem By Billy Collins

Billy Collins is deliberately explaining how readers tend to force their understanding of the meaning of an average poem. Most of the time poems confuse readers because of the dialect used to form different rhymes schemes and some readers just have a hard time coping with the communications devices used in most poems. Collins understands that to fully understand a poem and the intentions an author is trying to deliver, one most not look directly for a meaning but create their own. This is why he quotes in the poem from line four to eight “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”. These four lines were used to illustrate the notion that a reader will not always understand the meaning of a poem from just reading; cases like this you have to feel for a meaning first before coming to any conclusions. …show more content…
The reason why is because according to the last five lines where he quotes “but all the 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” details how he feels when readers try to make sense of his poems which is not the correct way according to him. In addition, Collins uses personification, giving his poem human qualities to explain what it really feels like when readers try to force an explanation out of his poems. However, trying to beat the meaning out of a poem will never result in a solution because it is psychically impossible which is the point Collins is attempting to