"Introduction to Poetry," by Billy Collins
Author: 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.
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I’m the Tech Liaison for the New York City Writing Project. I… (more)
I’m the Tech Liaison for the New York City Writing Project. I… (more)
The three important themes in this poem are creativity, metaphorically exploring a poem, and the misinterpretation of poetry. An inanimate object which could embody all three, and would be a recognizable symbol from the Frida Khalo era, is a gramophone. A text-to-image prompt for an image that can represent this analogy might read: “A gramophone sits in the foreground of an evening garden, with light shining between the trees; the sun behind the clouds captures the mood of creativity and connection that the poem symbolizes, and the shadow of the scene invokes the misinterpretation of poetry.” Remember AI is just a Thinking Partner in this process. Be sure to edit this prompt to make it say what you want it to say. Copy and paste this prompt into an image generator like https://StableDiffusionWeb.com..
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