Thank you, Mr. Collins

...for helping me free the poem that was for so long strapped in the chair of Institutional Education.

Asking my students to read a poem with me for the first time is always a funny experience. The idea that a poem can strike such fear deep into the hearts of seemingly dauntless teenagers is remarkable. My first year of teaching, I wasn't sure how to combat that fear. When I asked them their ideas or thoughts on the poem, they struggled to become mind readers, wishing so badly that they could crack the lock on my skull, sneak into my vault of knowledge, and pilfer the answers they thought I wanted.

I knew that I, too, had been unable to read my teachers' minds; and I was not able to break free of the fear of poetry until I was in college. But I wasn't sure what had clicked for me, what had made me get that I could interpret poetry for myself, that I could bring to each poem I read my own experiences, beliefs, and ideas. If I didn't know how it happened for me, how was I suppose to teach it to my students?

Then, I was introduced to you, Mr. Collins. I read Introduction to Poetry and knew that it was the missing link, the Rosetta Stone I needed to do my job well. And I was right. My students truly understood what the poem was trying to tell them, what I had been trying to tell them for the longest. The poem became that color slide-bee hive-mouse-light switch-waterskiing blade they needed to slice through the ropes they used to bind the poem. They dropped their hoses; they began to understand.