In Billy Collins’ poem “Introduction to Poetry,” he describes wanting students to “waterski across the surface of a poem / waving at the author’s name on the shore.” Instead, he laments, they want to “tie the poem to a chair with rope / and torture a confession out of it.”

The imagery makes us laugh because we recognize it. We see our students determinedly hunting for symbols, interrogating texts for themes, demanding confessions of meaning. More troublingly, we recognize our own teaching in that metaphor of torture. Our language betrays us:

Find evidence.

Extract meaning.

Support claims.

We’ve created a vocabulary of force rather than exploration.

But what if we took Collins’ waterski metaphor seriously? What if instead of teaching students to dive into texts and drown in them (or worse, to torture them), we taught them to move across stories with fluidity and grace – feeling how they operate beneath the surface while maintaining enough perspective to see their full shape?

The Art of Literary Investigation

Think about what happens when you waterski well. You develop:

• Sensitivity to the surface texture
• Awareness of how waves ripple and flow
• Feel for the forces moving beneath
• Appreciation for the full expanse and just enjoyment

This is what sophisticated readers do. They don’t just search for symbols or hunt for evidence. They feel how texts operate. They notice how elements ripple through stories. They track the forces moving beneath the surface. They recognize patterns in the flow of narrative.

Most importantly, they maintain enough distance to see the full shape of what they’re experiencing. Unlike a diver plunging into depths or an interrogator demanding answers, a waterskier moves with the text while keeping perspective on its entire form.

Making Movement Systematic

The challenge, of course, is teaching this kind of reading systematically. How do we help students develop this sensitivity to how texts operate without falling back into the vocabulary of extraction and force?

TRACE emerged from this challenge. Not as another tool for torturing confessions out of texts, but as a framework for literary investigation and moving through stories with genuine curiosity and systematic wonder.

Trigger Points

Like a waterskier feeling where waves begin, students learn to notice where elements spark to life in texts. Not just to find examples, but to feel where and how things emerge. When does power shift? Where do relationships transform? What moments spark change?

Ripple Effects

Rather than just collecting evidence, students track how changes flow through texts. They notice how one shift creates others, how transformations spread, how elements move and influence each other. They feel the ripples rather than just marking their existence.

Active Forces

Instead of just identifying themes, students sense what forces move beneath the surface of stories. What drives changes? What creates resistance? What powers transformations? They develop sensitivity to the currents that shape narratives.

Connect Dots

Beyond finding patterns, students recognize how elements flow together. They notice relationships between different currents, see how various forces interact, understand how separate elements influence each other. They map the complex interactions that create meaning.

Expose Details

Rather than hunting for evidence to support predetermined ideas, students learn to notice what specific moments reveal about how texts operate. They develop sensitivity to particular words, images, and scenes that show how stories work.

From Literary Investigation to Understanding

This approach transforms how students engage with texts. Instead of interrogators demanding answers, they become investigators exploring operations. Instead of divers drowning in depths, they become waterskiers moving with skilled appreciation across surfaces while maintaining perspective on the whole.

Most importantly, they develop systematic literary investigation skills without losing genuine curiosity about how texts work. Because ultimately, that’s what we want – students who can move through literature with both skill and wonder, equipped to explore how stories operate while maintaining real curiosity about what they discover.

The goal isn’t to extract meaning. It’s to explore how texts create it. Not to torture confessions from stories, but to feel how they work. Not to drown in symbols and evidence, but to move across narratives with enough skill to appreciate their full complexity.

Because maybe Billy Collins was right. Maybe the best way to read isn’t to dive or to interrogate. Maybe it’s to waterski – to move across texts with systematic skill while maintaining enough distance to wave at everything we notice along the way.