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Someone on the KOA server asked me to post a sample poem that I can't understand. Here it is.

"Zone," by Guillaume Appollinaire

Actually, "understand" is a good word for this only if it implies or allows for non-verbal understanding and appreciation. My basic initial approach to a poem, and what I try to avoid, are laid out in this poem: by Billy Collins.

Introduction to Poetry
Billy Collins (link above)

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.