Excavating Poetry and Staking Claims

Constructing an arguable thesis in a poem that isn't as cliche as singing in the rain or as boring as cardboard can be a real chore. Fortunately, I am not left to my own devices as I dig further into "Introduction to Poetry" by Billy Collins. Gideon Burton has stocked 9 helpful tips on his blog, Coming to Terms With Literature on how to really juice the nutrients of a poem, shake those insights into claims, and cocktail those claims into a thesis.



One guideline to more intimately know a poem is to hand-write it, and annotate it accordingly. The goal is to recognize smaller details that wouldn't stand out to you unless you went through a vague version of what the poet went through writing it down, and questioning the motives. For example, I hadn't paid attention to the comma in Billy Collin's, "Introduction to Poetry" until I had to write them myself. The comma is dispensed after the line, "I say drop a mouse into a poem/and watch him probe his way out". The comma is followed by, "or walk inside the poems room/and feel the walls for a light switch" The comma enhances the operation of the word 'or'. Or insinuates that those two actions accomplish the same thing. Thus, it is not the specific action that is important, but the result of what those actions accomplish. Billy Collins is not as interested in the journey as he is in the destination, even though the journey is what he's describing throughout the whole poem.

Another step included in Gideon Burton's 9 steps to come to term with literature is identifying the omissions, and pondering the purpose and emphasis those exclusions lend themselves to. "Introduction to Poetry" does not include a handbook on how to find the meaning of the poem. Billy Collins never claims that waterskiing on the poem will lead him to the meaning, despite the fact that it is implied when he describes how 'they' beat the poem and torture it to find meaning. From those clues, one could suppose that the active search for meaning is not the goal when reading a poem. Contradicting the previous conclusion I came to with the comma, this omission might imply that the end goal of finding the meaning is not as important as the journey one goes through with a poem. Finding opposing thought processes in a poem is good news because it means there is push and pull for both arguments, which is helpful when trying to strengthen claims and theses.

After annotating, contemplating omissions, and other various techniques, it's time to shoeshine the claims and prop them up with the evidence found. According to Gideon Burton, these are the five types of claims that should manifest themselves.

Policy Claim: A reader should engage in a poem with the majority of his/her senses.

Definition Claim: A poem is it's own entity, separate from the author.

Comparison Claim: A poem resembles nature in the way it should be explored and cared for.

Evaluation Claim: It's better to embark on an experience with a poem than to understand it.

Causal Claim: The consistent metaphors in "Introduction to Poetry" by Billy Collins result in the idea that the correct way to interact with a poem is inherently natural to a reader.

Although it has a long road ahead of it, these ideas are much better formulated and supported after going through blocks of Gideon Burton's 9-step treatment. Not to mention, the poem feels more like a friend than an acquaintance afterwards, which is perhaps what Billy Collins poem is about.