Eating Poetry by Mark Strand
I came across this in the Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry a while ago and immediately fell in love with it. One of my poetry pals celebrated his 80th birthday a couple weeks ago and I couldn’t be there for the shindig, but I made a page for his birthday scrapbook. I included this poem and the picture below (which I actually created by biting holes in pieces of paper on which I’d written some of our favorite poems). I get chills every single time I read the first three lines of this poem.
Eating Poetry
By Mark Strand
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.
Pink: Why I Wake Early by Mary Oliver
Blue: Famous by Naomi Shihab Nye
Orange: The Waking by Theodore Roethke
Green: One Art by Elizabeth Bishop
Current Tea: chocolate ginger rooibos (rooibos, flavored with cocoa bits, ginger, barley, and mint)
