Under the influence of Eaten Poems 

In the mid-seventies, when I was in college studying jazz history and art improvisation while learning that I did not want to grow up to be a professor-poet, one of the more unavoidable examples of contemporary American verse was Eating Poetry, by Mark Strand. It was written in 1968. I’m not sure there is anything likeable about it other than the undeniable fact that it is memorable.

The speaker in the poem, presumably Strand, is in a library, probably at some small, Mid-Atlantic, liberal arts college, sitting alone in a cramped carrel, drooling ink. He has been reading Robert Browning. From the dark heart of the dramatic monologue four dogs begin to howl, clambering up the wooden stairs from their home among the magazine archives in the basement.

The poet is envious of the dogs. He imagines chasing the librarian out from behind her desk and down the hall towards the card catalogues, bounding over the dusty brown carpet, baying at the moon. He flips a few pages in his anthology, eats a stanza of W. H. Auden.

The librarian pulls her cellphone like it’s a loaded Glock, calls campus security, who really are armed to the teeth. With his overactive imagination between his teeth like a bloody cutlass, he evaluates his situation, la condition humaine, and hurls himself headfirst through the second story window. He has been reading Rene Char, in translation, possibly by Richard Howard. To the health of the serpent, he cries, shaking off shards of imaginary glass from his official Baltimore Colts practice jersey. He has been reading James Wright.

The future is bright. He knows because he is in it. Drunk on his own power, In the empire of his senses, consider the senseless presence of a single Desert Trumpet, and drunk also (perhaps more importantly and with more purpose) on a bottle of Early Times Whiskey, he has been reading John Berryman, listening to The Birthday Party, reading the lyrics to Rum, Sodomy and The Lash.

He is getting ahead of himself. Time will be surreal or not at all. Eat enough poetry and hindsight becomes foresight. I am a new man, wrote Mark Strand in 1968. Four years later, Neil Young said: I’m from a new land. Something was in the air, probably The Zeitgeist (the Spirit of the Times). In 1971 Tom Clark published a book of poems entitled Neil Young. One page gave us the following: You can’t be 20 on Sugar Mountain / capitalism among insects. Eat that.

Eating poetry is, or at least in the late sixties and early seventies it was, a means of achieving an altered state of consciousness. It is not that eating poetry is like some experiences produced by certain drugs or sacred plants, it is that taking those mind-altering drugs and plants sometimes produces experiences that are similar to those encountered when under the influence of eaten poems. Be careful out there in your carrels and cafes, in your kitchens and on your couches, in your cars and on park benches.

Mark Strand says: There is no happiness like mine; and later; I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

I know what he means. Poetry can change your life irreparably. I read some — I may as well say I ate some — in 1972, and I have never recovered — probably because I have never wanted to recover.

06.08.2024