Summary

The speaker instructs their students to examine a work of poetry using all their senses. They encourage them to explore it from within, finding illumination along their way, to look at both its surface and its internal textures. However, the students take a more aggressive approach and beat at the poem, searching for its hidden meaning.

Analysis

The title of the poem, “Introduction to Poetry,” suggests a formal course structure as one might see in a high school or university setting. It also suggests that the poem itself will be an “introduction” to looking at a poem, offering a miniature education in its own 16 lines. This gives both a setting and an expectation of what this piece is offering the reader. In the first stanza, the speaker compares a poem to a “color slide” (Line 3), a transparent photograph which can be used to project...