The poet Billy Collins returns to Martha’s Vineyard on Tuesday, July 28, at Featherstone Center for the Arts. Mr. Collins hits the stage at 7 p.m. and tickets are $20.

Many wonderful words could be said about this bestselling writer and the former poet laureate (2001-2003). But perhaps the man says it best himself. Here he is with his poem, Introduction to Poetry:

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.