Oh, I'm still laughing at this column. Keillor manages to write a great humor piece while cribbing from and distorting bits from Willy S. to Jimmy Joyce. Really delightful...and here's "Introduction to Poetry" by Billy Collins, to keep the thread going.

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.
—Billy Collins