reader response to Eating poetry (this poem i had to read)

Reader response to Eating Poetry

What made me read this poem was the title; I mean Eating poetry? Being a major book worm, I instantly thought of mentally eating knowledge. I think that is what the author intended when he wrote the title. To me, this poem is about gaining knowledge and the pleasure gotten from it. Like the protagonist, I'm most happy when I'm learning something new, or getting lost in a story. Have you ever gotten lost in a book and just let time fly by, or started reading Wikipedia and next thing you know its 2:45am and you now know every thing about the cold war? Can the pursuit of knowledge ever be an addiction and if so is it a bad one? I personally don't think so.

I think the best thing about humans is that we constantly have to ask why. Even from a young age, we want to know why. Why does the sun shine? Why is Nicole's head red ? This pursuit of understanding the world pushes us, makes us do horrible things and makes us do amazing good. It can sometimes be intimidating, but it is a major part of who we are as a species. I think that in this poem the protagonist is transformed by his hunger for knowledge. He turns into a dog, because he stops thinking rationally about what he is doing to obtain knowledge. The writer is pointing out how our drive to understand can make us forget our humanity and how it can make us do abnormal things like lick someones hand, or in the case of Nazi scientists ignore the fact that you are experimenting on human beings.

Its apparent that learning more information about something has potential to change a person's view about it. So it can be can be said that knowledge change's people, since every time they gain information their view of the world shifts just a bit. Depending on a persons willingness to be open minded, their opinion on the matter could go many different ways. For example, if someone looks at the the earthquakes in Hatti and they want to to see the bad in their fellow man they will look at the looting and and mismanagement of help funds, but if one want's to see good then they will think "oh look people are helping others". One could let their original idea's be reinforced or they can see something new. I think in the end its up to a person how they want to view the world and how one interpret the information they learn.


In some way's life is like surfing the web, you can choose to go on shock sites, or sites that are just generally depressing. Or you can choose to go to sites that are funny or just simply informative. That's not to say you shouldn't ignore depressing parts of life, but you should look at them with a balance, personally I'm going to stick to informative and funny.