Eating Poetry - Mark Strand

I really really like this poem. It takes me back to childhood when you play pretend and turn into something. Eating poetry...I just love that sound and that concept. It's like having a tea party with poetry as the cookies.

It reminds me of an actor who will for a time, while filming, turn into his character, to really get the gist of his personality. The speaker here, turns into what he is reading to better understand it. I picture a little boy at the library, literally eating the pages of poetry, with the librarian standing there in shock. Or maybe even, it's a little boy who's just reading all this poetry which should be way over his head, but isn't, and the librarian can't get over that.

This is sometimes how I feel after I've been reading a book for a really long time, and after I finish reading, I'm so caught up in the characters of the book that I begin to think and act like them. If it's a British book I really honestly start thinking in a British accent and answering people with British phrases.

I don't have much to say about the style or structure of this poem, except that the 3 line stanzas go with my theory of this reminding me of a little kid poem...it's simple and broken up, something you might see in a children's book. It doesn't take a genius to understand it, although I'm sure there are things beneath the words that I'm just not catching.