Poem response

Paige Borowski 

10/23/19

IB Lit and Performance SL

I read the poem “Eating Poetry” by Mark Strand. This poem proves very interesting to me. My first impression when reading this poem is that it has a very eerie and dark vibe. I want to keep reading after just the first line. The poem gives me chills. This poem is kinda hard for me to analyze. I’m not sure what it means. I’m not sure if this is right, but to me it seems like the speaker is a dog and it ate it’s owners homework. The owner is sad but the dog tries to lick them and be happy. What I really love in this poem is that it gives a dark twist on something so familiar. The way it talks about the dogs and how “Their eyeballs rolls,” It’s very chilling and I enjoy reading and watching stuff that makes me shudder. I also love all of the incredible and descriptive imagery in this poem. In the line “Ink runs from the corners of my mouth,” I can imagine a man with an eerie and psychotic smile on his face and ink spilling from the gaps on the edge. It creates such a bold image in my head and sets the unsettling tone of the poem. Another line that stood out to me was “Their blond legs burn like brush.” The simile and the description of the legs creates such a clear image. I picture dogs running, fire flowing from their legs, being pushed by the wing. The thing I love most about this poem is the feeling of being reborn. When the author says, “I am a new man,” I feel like he remade himself into something he’d rather be. He puts a new foot forward and looks towards change for the better. The first question I have is why is the librarian being victimized? It seems like she’s really affected. That brings me to the next question; why was the librarian so sad?  Another question I have is what is happening to the dogs? It seems as though they are going through some sort of transformation. And my final question, what caused the transformation? What triggered such a big change? Overall, this poem was very interesting. It brought a lot of questions, mostly because what is really happening is a bit unclear to me. I’m not totally sure what the dogs represent and what the librarian. What I do know, is that there's an underlying theme and message.