This year at Belding, I am working with Mr. Merrill and Mrs. Navrocki's fourth-grades, and Mr. Aivazian's class. We began the year by reading Mark Strand's poem Eating Poetry, and talked about the strange and wonderful images it contains--ink running down the poet's chin, the dogs' eyes rolling, the librarian screaming as her books are eaten!

Students in Mr. Merrill's class wrote their own edible poems--check out a few of them below:


Abigail R.

Cake

The sweetness and softness of that cream
cake makes me faint. The taste is great you
can just smell it a mile away. The cream
is like jell-o but the taste is even better, oh,
how I love cake it just makes me faint.
The cream and the cake make a great taste
you could have plenty, it won't be
enough. This is what makes me faint.
Oh, how I love cream cake.

***
Caleb S.

My Crazy Delicious Dream

I am imagining that I can see a huge
table of food. The table has chicken,
ham, and all the food you can think of. I try
to grab a piece of cake. But all the food
suddenly flies away. People, animals, and
creatures out of the sky fall and eat the
food. All of a sudden, I hear the school
bell and I'm at lunch. Then someone
wakes me up. I didn't hear the bell. I
had a dream at home. Wait...what?

***

Students in Mrs. Navrocki's class imagined what it would be like to actually eat a poem. Some of their ideas are below:


Nathaniel T.
Eating All Poems

I was starving, there is nothing in the
fridge. The only thing was a poem book.

One of the poems made me starving like
Crazy.

The next thing I noticed, I ate the entire book.

I tried to stop, but every time I think about
food, I wanted more.

I went to the library, I check out a poem book,
I also went to the store, I bought more poems.

I ate all of the poems and there were no more.

***
Sasha P.

A Wordy Lunch

I eat a lot
like a big robot.
For there you see
how I can be.
But one sunny day
I ate my prey
and found a very odd item.
I asked what it does
I asked what it was
and one day there it was.
It was a poem.
I was sad
I was mad
I was also hungry.
So I decided to have a meal
right here and now
and all it took was
one gulp and it was done.
And now I am angry.
It was bad, I was sad
And it was all I had.

***
Amaris M.

I have found a book
it has Halloween poems.
I see I said and I
went off to bed. I had
the book with me. It's
Halloween. I eat each
poem. I have orange
ink on my face along
with black and red. My
Mom comes in and
wipes my chin and that
was my Halloween candy.
I was in my house
I was nice and clean.

***

In Mr. Aivazian's class, Tyler also wrote about what it might be like to eat a poem. Here's his work:

Tyler S.

Eating Blue Poems

I crumple up the poem and put it in my mouth.
I have blue ink running down my mouth.
The words are falling off the page.
The words run away and jump away through
the library.
They try to hide between the books, but I grab them
and put the words in the poem again.