Eating Poetry Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.
The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.
The poems are gone.The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.
Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.
She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,she screams.
I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark
.I romp with joy in the bookish dark.
i really like the eating poetry one. it has definitely become one of my favorite poems. i think that it represents writers block, and the frustration you have when you know what you just look at a blank page. we’ve all been there, and i was able to relate to that frustration, like snarling and barking.
Eating Poetry-
I like the lines “I am a new man/I snarl at her and bark/ I romp with joy in the bookish dark” These lines show how much reading can change you to become a “new person”. When the narrator resorts to licking the librarian’s hand, it is pure madness. She does not understand the happiness is completeing consuming a poem..eating it and enjoying it.
The Room
It is an old story, the way it happens
sometimes in winter, sometimes not.
The listener falls to sleep,
the doors to the closets of his unhappiness open
and into his room the misfortunes come —
death by daybreak, death by nightfall,
their wooden wings bruising the air,
their shadows the spilled milk the world cries over. There is a need for surprise endings;
the green field where cows burn like newsprint,
where the farmer sits and stares,
where nothing, when it happens, is never terrible enough.
This poem seems to be about a bad dream..when sleep takes over and unhappiness is revealed. Terrible things happens..multitudinous negative misfortunes. There us a need for a surprise ending..something unusual-like cows burning like newsprint. But nothing “is never terrible enough”. Is Strand saying that even nightmares aren’t as bad as reality? Life for a plighted farmer is worse than reality when the problems can be as severe as drought, crop failure..etc.
For “Eating Poetry”, I agree with Dev. Reading poetry, especially ones based on love, war, god, and other touchy ambigious subjects, leads to the reader understanding the author’s opinion and forming his or her own. Some poems, we have come to find out, are focused on disturbing or uncomfortable subjects, but they force us to gain knowledge about them. In a way, it corrupts the reader, and makes them into snarling barking dogs. While the reader is at some extent excited to have their eyes opened, outsiders like the librarian dislike the change they see, from an innocent being to a knowledgable corrupted being.