Collins_Sample

=Sample Unpacking: "Introduction to Poetry" lines 5-6= ("I say drop a mouse into a poem / and watch him probe his way out")

__Expert move #1: identifying the figurative language__
In Billy Collins’s poem “Introduction to Poetry,” the speaker tells his audience of readers of poetry to “drop a mouse into a poem / and watch him probe his way out” (5-6). This passage is primarily a metaphor because it establishes a comparison between two dissimilar things: a mouse in a maze and a reader with a poem. You could also say that, on the surface, there are two comparisons here: mouse to reader and maze to poem. These comparisons are clarified by the line "drop a mouse into a poem." This is not literally possible, so we have two things brought together specifically for the purpose of comparison.

It’s also an image because the verbs in particular ("//drop// a mouse...//probe// his way out") are visual, unlike "put a mouse" and "find his way out." But those visuals are dependent on the metaphor.

__Expert move #2: exploring denotations__
This is where **denotation** comes into play. As we know, a word's denotation refers to its literal, or dictionary definition. While we may be tempted to skip over this element and get right to the symbolism, this is where all of the important work is done. So, what is a mouse, literally? What are its literal qualities? Well, a mouse is a rodent, often a household pest. It is small and often kept as a pet--in this sense, they are not threatening, harmful, or aggressive. They are also used for experiments and scientific testing, often for the benefit of mankind.

A mouse is not a rat, which is seen as more dirty, dangerous, and disease spreading (Mickey Mouse wasn't Mickey Rat). It is important to think of what something "is not" because writers have choices--Collins could have easily said "drop a rat into a poem." There is a difference in denotation here, and as you'll see later, an even larger connotative contrast.

Collins sets up this metaphor to compare a poem to a maze used in psychological experiments and the reader of the poem to the experimenter. What is a maze? It's a puzzle, a series of winding passages indistinguishable from one another, and there is usually only one way out. A maze can also be a prison, and in classical mythology Deadalus built the legendary maze on Crete that held the Minotaur. A maze is a test.

We could extend this exploration even further to words like "probe," which means "explore," "search."

__Expert move #3: unpacking the figurative and connotative meanings__
This is where **connotation** comes into play. Connotation is the symbolic and suggestive meanings a words possesses, or the associations it carries. Think of when people refer to each other as a "snake" or a "dog." Unless someone is literally cold-blooded, has fangs, and sheds their skin, the meaning there is all connotative in nature. What meanings does the word suggest?

So, we said a mouse is a rodent and often a pest. At the same time, mice can also be pets--little white mice can be cute, curious, even endearing with their tiny, wiggly noses and whiskers. We also know that the mouse is being compared to the reader, or more specifically, the interpretive mind. Can the interpretive mind be a rodent? Can it be a pest? Possibly. When a text is especially challenging, a reader can get frustrated, annoyed with any obstacles to understanding. We also said that mice are small, not harmful of aggressive--what are the connotations to be extended to the comparison? Well, we could say that Collins wants his readers to be more playful than they are aggressive--not big or strong enough to knock the walls down, but with will enough to explore and search for that little nugget of food. Again, think of the alternative of the rat here and the connotations a rat carries--a rat is often connected with distrust, someone who betrays their friends and is of low moral character. Collins doesn't want these connotations in his poem--he wants those of a mouse. Perhaps instead the interpretive mind is the curious, busy, and intent.

What about the maze and its connotations? In what ways is a poem a puzzle? What does it mean to "probe" a poem? What is the "way out" of a poem? There are many possibilities here. Poems are puzzles in that they often present readers with unconventional language. We don't walk around in our daily lives speaking entirely in symbols, imags, and metaphors, but there are times that poems do. A poem can be a puzzle in that you want to make some sense, or pattern, out of what you're seeing. Also, completing a puzzle includes the connotations that come with the praise, satisfaction, or prize for doing so. And here you have more words, more denotations and connotations to explore. What is the prize for the reader of the poem? Is it "the right answer"? Or maybe it's the "way out." The way out might simply be the movement from confusion to clarity--people normally seek a "way out" from something they find oppressive, or want relief from. Does that mean poems are oppressive? Or, does it mean that by going through the process of reading a poem, your vision, upon probing and reaching the way out, is expanded? At the end of the maze in experiments, the mouse gets the reward of physical nourishment, while a reader receives intellectual, personal, emotional, or spiritual nourishment. By exploring the denotations you are able to move, via connotations, from vehicle to tenor and vice versa, expanding your understanding beyond the literal to the figurative. Revisit the lines and explore the possibilities further, like we see done below.

//**The speaker tells readers to "__drop a mouse into a poem__."**// At first, it's easy to assume that the mouse in the maze is the reader, but actually that's not what the language tells us. Instead, the reader is the experimenter, the one in control, the one who "drops the mouse" in the maze and observes it scurrying through the labyrinth, running into dead ends and then turning around to seek other pathways, doubling back over previous footsteps, testing this way and that in the non-linear process that Collins compares to interpreting poetry.

If the reader is the experimenter, then what's the mouse? The mouse could be interpreted as the engaged, playful, intellectual curiosity in each of us, and we are being asked to let that part of our intellect venture through the poem, gather what we find, and make sense of it.

The overarching metaphor is comparing a maze to a poem. The term maze suggests the idea of a site to be navigated, and perhaps suggests even the notion of a labyrinth. But while a labyrinth has, typically, an unambiguous route through it, a maze may have diversions, digressions, dead ends, and circuitous paths. In this way, Collins' metaphor asks us, perhaps, to revise our view of the poem as something to explore rather than conquer or rush through in a linear fashion.

//**The speaker wants the readers to "__watch him__" (the mouse).**// While interpretation is an active, dynamic process, the phrase "watch him" does imply some passivity or stepping back (for the purposes of observation), that you are to watch the action of another, that you are to watch the mouse explore and make its way through the twists and turns. Collins's use of "watch him" might indicate that, while interpretation is an active process, readers still have to accept the poem or maze on its own terms. You can't simply knock the walls over because that makes exiting the maze so much easier. While we have a meeting of two separate entities here--the mouse and the maze, the interpretive mind and the poem--each entity must maintain its own integrity and not overwhelm the other. Collins is describing interaction, not domination.

This “prob[ing]” is similar to interpreting poetry in that it’s an active, dynamic process of experimentation, not a straight shot to the end result. The mouse is running into dead ends and then turning around to seek other pathways, doubling back over previous footsteps, testing this way and that in the non-linear process that Collins compares to interpreting poetry. When we read poetry, we experiment with possible interpretations of this line, that symbol, this metaphor. One interpretation may not make sense after reading ahead, so we go back and re-interpret. We may not even understand part of the poem for a little while, so we don’t even go down that path, but as we keep reading, it may start to make sense, so we go back to it. We read a few stanzas and then go back and reread a couple of those stanzas before we keep going. Gradually, we start to make some sense of the poem. Collins’s idea that interpreting poetry is like watching a mouse “probe” (examine or explore thoroughly) a poem is very different from watching a mouse “race his way out” it or even “scurry his way out”; the former would be a rushed attempt to just get to the end, and the latter is less deliberate, a mindless rush again without that sense of exploration.
 * //The mouse will "__probe his way out__."//**

__Expert move #4: recontextualizing within the whole poem__
Like the other metaphors in the first 11 lines of the poem, Collins’s speaker wants readers to avoid the direct, shortest routes and aggressive, rushed attitudes in their reading process. As he explains after the turning point of “But” in line 12, he wants them to resist the urge to pin down the poem, “tie [it] to a chair,” “torture,” or “beat … it with a hose”—all metaphors that replace the interpreter’s sense of experimentation, play, and exploration of poetry in lines 5-6 with violence, pain, impatience, and an adversarial relationship with the poem.