33 pages • 1 hour read
Billy CollinsIntroduction to Poetry
Billy CollinsFiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1988A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Literary Devices
Form and Meter
Billy Collins’s “Introduction to Poetry” is a 16-line, free verse poem, meaning that there are no consistent patterns of rhyme, rhythm, or meter throughout the piece. The poem contains seven stanzas, or groupings of lines. Stanzas 3, 4, and 7 are two lines in length, better known as couplets. Stanzas 1, 5, and 6 are three lines in length, called tercets. However, Stanza 2 is only one line in length.
Stanza 2 (or Line 4) stands out because it stands alone, surrounded by a significant amount of white space due to its position on the page. Collins draws attention to Stanza 2 not only because of its singularity, but also because of its metrical features. Stanza 2 is written in iambic tetrameter: a line of poetry that is eight syllables in length, and follows a specific pattern of unstressed and stressed syllables. The four beats, or iambs, fall on every stress: “or press an ear ag-ainst its hive” (Line 4). Collins’s purposeful use of iambic tetrameter makes Stanza 2 both look and sound different than the rest of the poem, heightening readers’ sensory experience as the meter of Line 4 mimics the sound of the figurative bees buzzing in the hive that Collins describes within the poem (see: Poem Analysis).
Collins employs this same technique in Line 8, using the cadence of iambic tetrameter to simulate the sensation of touch. Readers can imagine a hand moving up and down a wall in search of a light switch as the meter moves up and down with the words: “and feel the walls for a light switch” (Line 8).
Iambic pentameter, or lines of poetry that are 10 syllables in length (as opposed to tetrameter’s eight), and follow a specific pattern of unstressed and stressed syllables, is more commonly taught in introductory poetry courses. So, while some lines throughout Collins’s “Introduction to Poetry” follow the familiar cadence of iambic pentameter (Lines 5, 11, 13, and 14), his use of tetrameter is what keeps readers engaged, giving the poem its unexpected and energetic movement and bounce.
Free verse gives Collins the freedom to introduce poetry as a dynamic, fluid genre, and the chosen form speaks directly to the content Collins explicates in “Introduction to Poetry.”
Enjambment
Collins uses enjambment to make the short lines of the stanzas flow naturally together. Enjambment occurs when one line of poetry flows into the next without being end-stopped by any form of punctuation. The entirety of Stanza 1 is enjambed, and even moves from its last line (Line 3) into the first and only line of Stanza 2 (Line 4) with ease. The lack of punctuation from “I ask them to take a poem” through to “or press an ear against its hive” works to fully immerse readers in Collins’s imagery before they are given pause (Lines 1-4). This use of enjambment therefore echoes Collins’s central claim that poetry is not just something to analyze, but is rather something to experience without interruption.
Enjambment creates internal connections across line breaks, generating a momentum that matches that of the speaker’s tone. The speaker of “Introduction to Poetry” enthusiastically compares poems to image after vivid image. The tension and release found in this laidback lecture is the same as that of the enjambed lines, encouraging readers to move steadily from one stanza to the next. The students within the poem are taught to avoid pausing and overanalyzing through Collins’s purposeful omission of punctuation.
The last lines of Stanzas 5-7, however, are each end-stopped by periods. There is enjambment at work within these stanzas but not across them. Lines 9 and 10 flow naturally into Line 11:
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore (Lines 9-11)
And yet they’re cut off from the following stanza due to the definite pause the period creates after “shore.” (Line 11). The tonal shift between Stanzas 5-6 impacts Collins’s use of enjambment as the students’ more rigid and academic perspective overruns both the content and the structure of the piece, separating the stanzas as individual pieces disconnected from the whole. The end-stops become predictable and formulaic just like the students try to force poetry to be.
Figurative Language: Personification
The similes and metaphors that make up the majority of “Introduction to Poetry” come and go in rapid succession. Each short stanza brings with it a new image for the speaker to compare poetry to. However, the personification of poetry as the victim of analysis within the final two stanzas of the poem is the most sustained image in the entire piece, leaving a lasting impression on readers that is much more sinister than any of the images that came before it.
Personification is a technique of figurative language that endows non-human subjects with human characteristics. This figure of speech is a form of metaphor, in that it ascribes the qualities of one thing to another.
The poem is personified as a helpless victim to the whims of the students who resort to tying “the poem to a chair with rope” in order to “torture a confession out of it” (Lines 13-14). Collins humanizes the poem to make readers feel more sympathetic toward its harsh treatment. All of the exciting and positive comparisons drawn about poetry in the beginning of the piece make the ending of the poem all the more devastating. Personifying the poem makes readers align with the speakers’ perspective and method of teaching, framing poetry as something that should be nurtured and cared for, not tortured and beat down.
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