The speaker in Mark Strand's "Eating Poetry" is so transformed by his consumption of poetry that he scares a librarian with his animalistic behavior. At first glance, the poem focuses on the speaker's literal, visceral consumption of poetry and how it transforms him into a dog-like creature. On closer inspection, the poem is much more about the difference in how people experience and consume poetry, particularly the radically different way in which the man and the librarian appreciate it. Assuming that the librarian also appreciates poetry, the reader is left to wonder why she never transformed like the speaker. Say no to plagiarism. Get a Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get an Original EssayIn the first stanza of the poem, the speaker tells the reader, almost as if in a clandestine confession, that his happiness is due to his consumption of poetry. At first, the reader is unsure whether this sentence should be taken metaphorically: perhaps the one speaking is actually a dog acting like a man? This is refuted later in the poem, which implies that the meaning of the poem is more than its superficial metaphors. Eventually, when "the poems are gone," he experiences the first of several mood shifts, which also leads to a shift in tone in the poem (line 7). His joy begins to turn to sadness, which is reflected in the Librarian's behavior at the sight of man's destruction. The poetry's effect on the speaker is highlighted when he refers to and describes dogs that "are on the basement stairs and coming up" as if they were wild or crazy (line 9). These dogs become an important symbol, as the speaker's consumption of poetry causes him to seemingly transform into one of them. It's as if dogs thirst for poetry. Perhaps they were once men like the speaker, and they consumed so much poetry that their being was permanently transformed. Their arrival quickly changes the tone of the poem from sadness to chaos. The speaker's transformation is spurred by the appearance of the dogs. He embraces their chaos and becomes one of them. This is reflected in the form of the poem itself, as the last two stanzas contain the only instances of end rhyme throughout the poem. This is meant to finalize the transformation itself and show how happy the speaker is once transformed. From this chaos and this transformation, the tone of the poem and the mood of the man return to the joy of the beginning: he is a “new man, / [he] growls at her and barks , [he] frolics with joy in the bookish darkness. (Lines 16-18). The poetry he consumed took him and became a part of him, transforming his being into something much more primal. This display of primal behavior, the speaker's need for poetry and immediate transformation, is deeply upsetting to the librarian because it is not something she has experienced. Even “[h]er eyes are sad” when she sees the damage the man has done to the poetry in the library (line 5). The librarian is drawn into a chaotic atmosphere when her initially demure demeanor and quiet sadness later transform into outright crying. As librarians are protectors of all things literary and treat the written word with respect, she is devastated by the destruction of something she is supposed to safeguard. She would never dream of destroying poetry as man does in his consumption. Her discomfort with the man's actions is also highlighted.