Collins Response

You say tie the poem a chair
and beat it with a rope
You say we must not beat it with a hose

But

Perhaps your beating is our exploration,
encouragement for the meaning of the poem to come out of hiding.
Experiencing the poem
does not have to mean sitting idly by
and merely expecting it to happen to us

Beating it with a hose
does not mean we invalidate or detract
from the poem
Instead, we discover the humanity
Often hidden inside

Delving strongly, deeply into the words
The phrasing
The punctuation
allows us to
Understand, relate, feel, and fall in love
the poetry