The Speaker

The speaker is implied to be a teacher or professor of literature. This may reflect poet Billy Collins’ own lived experience, as he was teaching poetry at the time at which this poem was written. Regardless, the speaker in this poem reflects an experience which many teachers will be able to relate to as they try to encourage a passion for learning in their classrooms. The speaker sees poetry as an art form to be explored through imagination, creativity, and sensuality. However, they’ve become frustrated at their students’ need to pin down a poem to a single meaning, neglecting the experience for the end result.

The Students

The students in this poem can be any age — primary schoolers, high schoolers, or university students. They reflect an innate social need to understand challenging literature, thereby asserting a sort of dominance over it. Most likely, these students are...