Imagery And Symbolism In Billy Collins Introduction Of Poetry

Poetry is a very beautiful and unique form of literature, but it often is given a bad reputation. The main reason being is people overanalyze it, instead of taking in the beauty of it. Billy Collins’s poem “Introduction of Poetry” explains how people overanalyze and take away from the beauty of a poem. The speaker suggests ways of reading poetry that allow the reader to understand the poem, but not take away from the beauty of it. Billy Collins quotes “I ask them to take a poem / and hold it up to the light / like a color slide” (lines 1-3) meaning take the poem that is being read and analyze it, but do not analyze it to the point you loose sight of the beauty or “colors”. In Billy Collins’s “Introduction to Poetry” he uses imagery and symbolism to convey the theme: that overanalyzing takes away from the beauty of the poem. The use of imagery to convey the theme of over analyzation starts off at the very beginning of the poem. The speaker quotes “I say drop a mouse into a poem / and watch him probe his way out” (lines 5-6) the mouse …show more content…
They allow the speaker to express a theme through various literary elements such as imagery and symbolism. Billy Collins’s “Introduction of Poetry” does an amazing job at using imagery and symbolism, to covey the them of over analyzation of poetry. The imagery and symbolism start off paining a picture of how a poem should be read an analyzed, and as the poem continues it goes into how a poem should not be analyzed. The speaker is telling the reader that to understand a poem and see the true beauty of it, the reader must look at all the wonderful details because that is where the meaning will be. The reader should not just read the poem over and over looking for a meaning. When a reader does this it not only frustrates them, but it also takes away from the poem. They do not see all the details or comparisons made, all they see is a jumbled mess that they want an answer