The following talk was given at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California.

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So this poem, Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins, I'll say that Billy Collins, he was the poet laureate for the United States in 2001 to 2003.

His poems kind of use simple language and they often have a certain whimsy to them, and I appreciate them very much.

I'll say that he's currently a professor,

and he has been a professor for different universities during his career.

So introduction to poetry, we can imagine as a course that he was teaching.

And maybe I'll read the poem again, and then I'll say a little bit more about him and the poem.

So this poem is called an introduction of poetry.

Again, it's by 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 water ski 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.

Wow, this last slide, they begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means. Wow, this last line, they begin beating it with a hose to find

out what it really means quite something, right? A certain like violence of trying to figure things out.

I don't know. It makes me chuckle because how many times did I do this with my experiences in the world trying to figure everything out?

It's been using my mind to figure everything out.

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