Poem Response

Ryan Purdy

Poem Response

IB Lit and Performance

The poem “Eating Poetry” is written by Mark Strand. The poem takes place in a library and is about a man who is eating poetry. The poem starts off with the man who is very happily eating the poems, then the librarian sees him and the dogs start coming up from the basement. After the dogs came up the man began acting like a dog himself. My first impression of the poem I was a little confused. I was confused because the poem is about eating poems, and it starts by saying how the is ink dripping down from the corner of his mouth because he has been eating poems. Although my first impression was confusing after reading the poem a couple times it began to make more sense. After I read it over many times I realized that at the end of the poem when the man begins acting like a happy dog, that this was probably due to him eating the poems in the first place. Although I found this poem a little confusing I did like how the man started acting like a dog himself after he ate the poems. I think this added a comedic affect because all I could picture was a man in a library eating poems and acting like a dog. I really liked this part because throughout most of the of the poem I was confused and did not really enjoy it. But when I read the man started acting like a dog himself it just made me laugh. There are many questions I would like to ask the poet because of how weird or confusing the poem was. 4 questions I would ask the author is “what does the man eating the poems signify or mean?”, “why did dogs come up from the basement, in a library?”, “why is the man eating poetry in the first place?”, and “why does the man begin acting like a dog at the end of the poem?”