Eat this poem. When you are done
Its succulence will astound you.
Its juice will streak your chin.
You will sigh when it is gone.

You will leave your mark when you bite
And your teeth tear through its flesh,
And you will find the latest verse
Written on its pearly core

Toss its seed across your shoulder
Do not care for it one wit.
How it molds and grows behind you
Will not move your step one inch.

This is about as arrogant a poem as one can write. For one thing, its subject is poetry itself and theories of literature. One thing I’ve learned is that most people may sometimes care about the effect a poem might have on them or its meaning , but they don’t care about poetry as an idea and certainly not about theories of literature.

I myself am not dogmatic about much in those directions except that I insist that poetry does not occur until someone utters the poem out loud and with feeling–much more important than formal rhythm, which can lead to those horrid executions I used to suffer through listening to eighth graders read. “Bah-DA bah-DA, Bah-DA, Bah-DA; Bah-DA Bah-DA, Bah-DA Bah-DAAAAA.”

I praised them of course, but always nudged them towards reading it as though they understood what it meant, particularly if they could form an idea of who they were speaking for in a particular poem and what the words would mean to that person and how that person would say those words. So I am dogmatic on the point that poetry is read most properly when it is read aloud with appropriate passion.

I suppose the passion in this poem is a kind of lightheartedly arrogant goofiness. If you can do Errol Flynn, this would be a good application of that talent. The speaker–as my ancient teacher, Laurence Perrine, would insist we identify– is the poet himself/herself and, we would guess, the dramatic situation (also a Perrinian notion) might very well be in the midst of a reading of poetry when the audience is onto it, goosed, as it were, and ready for a laugh, which is pretty much where I’ve used this poem in the past. I did revise it to the plural (Eat these poems) and tag it at the end of a chapbook I put out a couple of years ago, There’s More to Blues Than Meets the Eye, available online for free or in print for a mere ten dollars.

How many was that you wanted?