From the opening stanza, Mark Strand's Eating Poetry sets a surreal ambiance around an insatiable desire for words, literally and figuratively.
And if the job of an artist is to provide their patrons with a bold new perspective by which to view things, then poet Carol Muske-Dukes fulfills such promise with The Invention of Cuisine.
Eating Poetry
In order for a writer to hook the reader into the story they are telling, be it novel, short story, or poem, a writer must whet the appetite with a potent opening paragraph, chapter, or line. And this is exactly what Mark Strand does with his fantastically intriguing opening line from Eating Poetry:
Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. (1)
Unable to resist the sensory allure inherent in the form and shape of syllables, vowels, and consonants, the speaker in Eating Poetry dines upon the beauty and delectability of poetry:
I have been eating poetry. (3)
If stanza number one tantalizes the reader with Lewis Carroll-like insinuations, tapping into the reader’s somewhat scandalous fantasies about what it means to be engorged by literature, then the second and third stanzas set about building a mystery:
The librarian does not believe what she sees. (4)
The poems are gone. (7)
For one supposes, as Mr. Strand does, as the reader does, that poetry consumed must be digested, and absorbed into the blood stream.
But, who could do such a thing? What kind of human being could take poetry that belongs to all of mankind and devour it, in an act of selfish gluttony?
The poor librarian may never know, but, thanks to Mr. Strand, the reader will discover the answer in the fifth stanza, when the speaker of the opening line, There is no happiness like mine (2), is revealed to be a most unexpected lover of poetry.
I am a new man. (16)
I romp with joy in the bookish dark. (18)
The Invention of Cuisine
Throughout The Invention of Cuisine, Carol Muske-Dukes suggests that by simply looking at a plate of food, a reader may discover all manner of life, adventure, and possibility, just lying there, waiting to be eaten, literally and figuratively:
Imagine for a moment
the still life of our meals, (1-2)
Ms. Muske-Dukes does a brilliant job of germinating a lovely poem from the seemingly inanimate, by using her plate as a palate, full of color and life; from the yellow cheese (3) to the blue armor of fish (4); tracing back bread to the bluest wisp of a woman working the fields of wheat, before bread was invented (6).
She asks the reader to consider for a moment food as a necessity, rather than a luxury to be meditated over by the likes of poets and carnivores:
…because cuisine has not yet been invented. (14)
…nor the science of imagination. (16)
Martin G. Wood - M.G. Wood is a writer of screenplays, film and literary reviews, and poetry. M.G. Wood can often be found ...
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