Poems that you love

[Todd]

This is a great piece and makes me want to read more of Richard Hugo!

Richard Hugo wrote one of the best books of advice on writing poetry also: The Triggering Town

It's nice to know he can teach and do.

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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.

I'm really not a Billy Collins fan, but I've always liked the last two lines of this poem, as well as his Victoria's Secret poem, and his Another Reason I Don't Keep a Gun in the House.