Reading Response on Poetry || Draft 1

Often, poems should be read as if eating candy; short, sweet, and enjoyable for those minutes while eating them. The poem Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins shows you just how much the mind over-analyzes the literature that we read. A simple sentence can quickly turn from being  scenic to being a long metaphor for some hidden message. The narrator wants you to realize that often its good to enjoy reading poems without over-analyzing the words written in them.

One important observation i had while reading the poem is that people should interact with poems in a carefree manner. "I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out," [Collins 5-6]. This quote shows that people should interact with the poem while reading it. They should explore the sentences and focus on their sounds and creativity instead of diving down too deep and putting themselves in a position where all they want to do is kill the poems beauty and find its "meaning". It is a natural behavior of a human being to want to find out what a poem means and to be the first one to think in such a "creative" manner, when if you ask the author what they meant, all they  will tell you is that is poem message is not what you thought it was, and it may have been 10x simpler than you made it be.

A lot of the time, by looking too deeply for the poems "moral", people forget to focus on the important things in a poem, like its beauty and verbal tranquility. "But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with a rope and torture a confession out of it," [Collins 13-15] Often, people don't appreciate the simplicity of words and twist them around to make them mean something more than they actually do. The author states that most people have the tendency to overthink things, which leads to stretching out the morals of the literature into something they are not, and making the individuality of the writing become lost in time and space. I have seen myself doing the same thing the narrator talks about many times. In school, we are taught to analyze and develop our ideas to the point of focussing on only on the big picture instead of the small details that make the story enjoyable and interesting to read.

Why can't we all, for once, just read for pleasure and forget all of this rules that make us analyze instead of focussing on the importance of scenery and language, which makes the book a piece of art instead of a mystery novel? The text summarizes the people because of the traits that are discussed that show our compulsive nature to analyze and dissect poems, and literature in general.  Readers should see that letting go and drifting away from rules can be a good thing, and can help you enjoy reading.