Wait, stop! Don't click away from this. It's not the
Introduction to Poetry class. You know, the one you took last
semester, and every day you thought you were either going to
slip into a coma-like sleep or, if you'd had too much caffeine
to actually snooze, die from a lethal cocktail of boredom and
frustration? In fact, this is a poem titled "Introduction to
Poetry," and it may well be the antidote that you've been
searching for—possibly even giving you the superpower needed to
change "boring and frustrating" into "interesting and exciting."
And who better to jazz up poetry for you than one of America's
foremost poets? Billy Collins was born in 1941 (you can do the
math) in New York City. This former U.S. Poet Laureate is well
known for his straightforward, insightful, often chuckle-
inducing verse. Billy has been a busy boy, publishing more than
ten books of poetry and organizing the Poetry 180 project to
help promote poetry education in schools. Which makes a whole
lot of sense, when you think about it. In