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.