In one of his poems, “Introduction to Poetry,” Billy Collins explains his motive: he wants the readers of his poetry to “water ski across the surface of a poem waving at the author’s name on the shore.” But he laments that people only want to analyze his poetry, deconstruct it, reduce it, and pull the soul out of it. “But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with a rope and torture a confession out of it.”