The Bible and Billy Collins

Billy Collins was Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001-2003. Like many a Poet Laureate, he spent a good deal of his life trying to teach people to appreciate the medium. But a good deal of the time, he found it frustrating... especially in his role as a college English professor. Very often, people want to know the one, exact, unequivocal meaning of a poem.... when even the Poet Laureate is only dimly aware of the many potential interpretations that his own good work may hold. He experienced many instances of this frustration, and so he responded as good poets often do -- he wrote a poem about it.

And it is one in which I find resonance with my own profession. Very often, people in churches want to know the one, exact, unequivocal meaning of a passage in the Bible. But the Bible consists mostly of a sort of poetry, though it doesn't much rhyme. Few of its passages have any single, absolute meaning.

I am pleased to report that in preaching and teaching the Bible, I seldom have to deal with the problem that the former Poet Laureate so often faced when teaching poetry. I serve a self-selected audience that isn't obliged to fulfill "Humanities" course requirements for graduation. So I present his original poem, and my adaptation of it, not so much as a corrective as to remind us of the fathomless potential meaning that we can find in the scripture:

INTRODUCTION TO POETRY
Billy Collins (former poet laureate of the US)

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 waterski
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.

***********

INTRODUCTION TO THE BIBLE
--with thanks to Billy Collins!

I ask them to take the Bible
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into the Bible
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the Bible's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of the Bible
waving at its many authors’ names on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the Bible 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.

******

So together may we waterski across the gospels, waving happily at Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as they stand, cheering us, along Galilee's shore!