Summat Ironical

Did you know that "ironical" is accepted usage? That hurts me a little.

Rutter's Creative Writing class recently discovered irony. Every day since has been a delightful forum for the airing of ironic stories, such as the creator of the Segway dying in a Segway accident. As is natural, there have been many discussions about what is and is not ironic. I got onto a rant at one point about Alanis Morissette's song "Ironic" and how nothing actually labelled as ironic in the song could truly be construed as irony. An upstart student, however, pointed out that if this were true, then the title "Ironic" was indeed irony. Clever little thing . . .

Anyway, this week has been dominated with my internal criticism and identification of irony. I was sorting computer files and stumbled across this poem (one of my favorites) that I use to introduce the concept of poetry and figurative language to my reading kids. It struck me that using a poem to introduce poetry was indeed ironic.

Ah, life: it's so ironic.

I'm going to post the poem because it's just a damn good poem.

Introduction to Poetry
By: Billy Collins



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.