Eating Poetry

Eating Poetry Introduction

In A Nutshell
"Eating Poetry," first published in Selected Poems (1980). Only in this case, Strand's speaker is
literally "eating poetry" while ink spills from the corners of his mouth (mmm, poem). He loves it
that much.
So what we get in "Eating Poetry" is a mixture of some plain language like "eating poetry" and
some surreal imagery, with burning dogs climbing up staircases and such.

Eating Poetry Summary

The poem opens with the speaker eating poetry while ink runs from the corners of his mouth. A
librarian spots him and doesn't understand what she's seeing. After all the poems are eaten, a
bunch of dogs start coming up the stairs while their eyeballs roll and their legs "burn like brush."
The librarian starts to stamp her feet and weep because she doesn't understand. The speaker
then licks her hand and she screams. He snarls and barks at her. Then he romps with joy in the
"bookish dark."

Stanza 1 Summary
Lines 1-2
Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.

 We can presume that the speaker has just eaten something with ink in it.
 In fact, he's as happy as can be since he says in line 2, "there is no happiness like mine."
 Notice that we're getting this poem directly from the source, since it's in first-person. That
means it's getting personal with lots of "I," "me," and "my." We're seeing things from the
speaker's own weird perspective that allows us to feel and see things like he does.
 The speaker also has an active voice, which means we're present in the moment as this is
all happening, adding a sense of immediacy to the experience of such weird goings-on.
 We can't ignore the vivid imagery we get right from the start.
 Notice too that both lines end with a period. That means we should stop and take a
moment to consider each line by itself before putting the pieces together. In a way, each
line is kind of its own unique thought and deserves its space.
 line 1 ends with a period because we may have to stop and let that image settle for a
minute before moving on.

Line 3
I have been eating poetry.
  By line 3 we get where the ink is coming from: poetry. So, by the end of the first stanza,
Strand has succinctly set up the subject and his action in only three short lines—very
precise.
 And just like the first two lines, we need to allow this additional surreal image to sink in
before moving on, hence the period.
 Notice the slightly confessional element of line 3, as if the speaker is letting us in on this
embarrassing yet totally delightful activity of "eating poetry." It's as if we the readers have
just caught him in the act and he knows it.
 The speaker isn't trying to suggest that he's using figurative language here. On the contrary,
he is literally "eating poetry,"

Stanza 2 Summary.
Line 4
The librarian does not believe what she sees.

 So, not only are we catching the speaker in the act, but so is the librarian. And she's not as
happy about it as the speaker is.
 At this point, we know for sure that there isn't any figurative language .The librarian's
disbelief proves that this is really happening—at least in terms of the poetry's logic.
 But what's the point of all this "eating" of poetry? By line 4 we understand that this is really
happening, but we are also getting the sense that Strand is not just writing this to make us
laugh.
 Instead there seems to be a kind of allegory in which the "eating" of poetry is symbolic of
the personal enjoyment of anything, be it poetry or popcorn.
 So, the librarian here looks to be representative of those outside parties that witness such
ecstatic enjoyment and just can't understand it for themselves. And they can't understand it
because they're not the ones experiencing it.

Lines 5-6
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.

 It doesn't look like the librarian is walking with joy here. Maybe after seeing the joyous
speaker with ink dripping from his mouth, she's wishing she could feel the same about
something.
 But instead her "eyes are sad," which tells us she can't hide those disappointed or
unfulfilled feelings that she's got.
 She also "walks with her hands in her dress," which gives the impression that she's
withdrawn and not looking to talk it up with anyone.
 Notice the enjambment we have here, which is different from all the periods we saw in the
first stanza.
 In this case, having one line flow into the next maintains the image of the librarian at this
particular moment.
Stanza 3 Summary
Lines 7-8
The poems are gone.
The light is dim.

 So the speaker's gone and eaten all the poems. There's nothing left for the librarian now.
 But why are the lights dim? Did eating all the poems suddenly turn the lights off?
 In this case we might have some more symbolism. The "light" in line 8 might literally refer to
the lights in the library. But symbolically they might refer to inspiration and that joyous
moment the speaker just had while eating poetry.
 After all, as much as we'd like to we can't make those joyous moments last forever and,
once they're over, the lights go "dim" again.
 And just like we saw in the first stanza, each line here is separated by a period that makes
us stop and think. But it may also at this point function in a way that maintains Strand's
very succinct and precise use of language.
 Also, notice the familiar-looking syntax of these lines. Each line begins with the word "the"
and has a simple subject and predicate organization. Recurring syntactical structures, by
the way, create what's called parallelism because they kind of look like parallel lines.
 As far as what this does to the poem's sound and meaning, we get the sense that the
speaker is feeling a bit disappointed at this moment after eating all the poems. So the lines
purposely sound a bit deflated and boring with those repetitive clauses in order to reflect
how he's feeling.

Line 9
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

 This is the surreal aspect that can be read in many different ways.
 So what are these dogs, why are they in a library, and why are they "coming up"?
 If we think about what the speaker was just doing and how he felt, we can assume that
these dogs are symbolic of what happens after all the joyous inspiration is gone.
 And since they're in the "basement" we have even more reason to suspect that this line is
getting at some of the speaker's darker thoughts and feelings.
 Also, we get the sense that these aren't your typical fluffy best friends, since they're in the
basement. Dogs trapped in basements aren't all that happy.
 So again there's something ominous about the mood in this line.
 Strand likes to write a lot about individuals struggling in this metaphorical "darkness," in
their attempt to understand themselves. So we may have a similar sort of thing happening
here too with the dogs in the basement.
 And since this line is very different from its preceding lines in terms of its subject, we can
also assume that we have a shift in the speaker's thought process happening here.

Stanza 4 Summary
Lines 10-11
Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
  These dogs don't look too friendly with their rolling eyeballs and burning legs. They sound
scary.
 And just like we saw in the previous lines about the librarian, Strand is keeping this image
together without any periods between them. So we see these hellish dogs in one relatively
fluid moment with only a comma to make us pause for a second.
 Like we saw before, joyous moments can't last forever, and sometimes we might go from
feeling really happy to really sad or even frightened.
 So the same thing seems to be happening here. While the speaker was eating poetry, he
was super-happy. And now that he's eaten all the poems, there's nothing left, so now those
hellish dogs are on their way up ready to wreak havoc on the speaker's mind.
 We don't get any specifics as to how these dogs will influence the speaker, but we do
know that there's some darkness there nonetheless. So the ambiguity here allows us to fill
in the blanks based on our own associations with hellish dogs.
 Also we see some alliteration here with "blond" "burn" and "brush." So our attention is really
drawn to the appearance of those burning legs, which helps to accent Strand's surrealistic
imagery.
 "Brush" here is the things you see out in the woods that burns pretty easily, like weeds and
small sticks.
 Those dogs seem to be literally on fire here, which adds to their rather hellish appearance
and powerful influence.

Line 12
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.

 We can't be too sure if the librarian is weeping because she sees the same burning dogs
that the speaker does. But we know she was sad to begin with, so now it looks like she's
feeling even worse.
 More importantly, this line really accents the shift in mood that's occurred. Things have
escalated in a way that's gone from joyous to surrealistically dark and chaotic even.
 We get the sense that neither joy nor darkness can exist by themselves in this poem.
They're mingling with one another and transitioning from one to the other right before our
eyes (trippy).
 Meanwhile, the librarian stamps her feet and weeps. The speaker though seems to have a
better understanding of what's going on even if we don't. In a way, we're also like the
librarian seeing all these weird things and trying to figure it out.
 Notice too the assonance we hear in "feet" and "weep," accenting that long E sound. So the
stamping and weeping kind of blend into one another like the other characteristics used to
describe the librarian in the second stanza.

Stanza 5 Summary
Line 13
She does not understand.

 Line 13 seems to be the takeaway point of all the weird stuff we've just seen.
 But here's a question: what's the significance of the "outside" party being represented by a
librarian? Yes, the speaker is eating poetry, so he's presumably in a library with librarians,
but is there something else going on here?
 Maybe besides being an outsider, the librarian is also symbol of the types of bookish
people who study things, but who don't really get the lived experience of the real world
that's around them.
  And again, when we think of anyone's personal experience of joy, darkness, or anything
else, we understand that those outside parties will never fully grasp that individual's
experience.

Lines 14-15
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.

 So the speaker is licking the librarian's hand like a dog and the librarian screams. That
seems natural.
 On top of not understanding, the librarian is also a little frightened of the poetry eating and
now our dog-man speaker.
 For our purposes, the poetry eating dog-man speaker may represent the transformations
that can occur for the individual reading poetry.

Stanza 6 Summary
Lines 16-17
I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.

 By line 16, we get that a transformation has indeed occurred: "I am a new man."
 But we're also given some assurance that the speaker is still a "man" even if he's barking,
licking, and snarling at the librarian.
 And it doesn't look like the speaker is too bothered by this sudden transformation, either. In
fact, he seems right at home with his snarling and barking.
 If we think about personal experiences in a more general sense, we understand what
Strand is getting at here with all the transforming weirdness that we've seen.
 For the person experiencing these things, those changes inevitably become part of who he
is. But for those outside of the experience, those changes often don't make sense and can
be a bit frightening even.

Line 18
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

 After all is said and done, the poem has a happy ending with the speaker romping with joy
in the "bookish dark."
 Notice the couplet here. Strand ends his poem with the end rhyme of "bark" and "dark." That
perfect rhyme really annunciates the joy the speaker is feeling, despite all the barking and
"dark."
 By the very end, we see even more this mingling of "joy" with the "dark" in a way that
suggests that the two get along just fine.
 In fact, all the burning dogs and darkness that we saw earlier seem to be less scary by line
18. The dog-man now "romp[s]" around like a puppy at a park.
 Here, too, the dark is "bookish," which gives it an intellectual flair, rather than the hellish
one we saw earlier with the basement and burning dogs.
 By the end of the poem, all of the transitions between joy, darkness, and burning dogs
seem to suggest that it is part of the speaker's delightful activity of "eating poetry."
Although people like the librarian just don't get it, our speaker is "a new man" because of
his steady diet of poetry—deliciously transformative.