The poem, ”Marginalia” by Billy Collins explores the different type of note readers might make, such as students who might find the importance and the emotional aspect of the marginalia. The narrator expresses what is like to be a writer and have your ideas thrown into the hand of others who bring their own perspective to the work. While it seems that the narrator talks about the literal level of reading books that other people have read , beyond that the poem uses metaphor, irony and humor to describe how ideas are thrown in the hands of the reader.

The narrator uses metaphors to describe the comments written in the side margins of a text play. The narrator describes the side margins to be a set of “empty bleachers” where the words can