The smart set has characterized Americans as both (a) fleshy gluttons and (b) rubes deaf to poetry. Being a glass half-full sort of intern, though, I suspected that a sort of stone and two birds maneuver might present itself. But it took the Academy of American Poets to decoct my airy hopes into a delicious consomme of action.
To wit, How to Eat a Poem: A Smorgasbord of Tasty and Delicious Poems for Young Readers. According to the Academy, "this anthology invites young readers to sample a taste of irresistible poems that will nourish their minds and spirits." The cover displays the word ’POEM’ with a large, cartoonish bite taken out of it, and the letters’ orange substance closely resembles, to me, the pasteurized processed mozzarella cheese product I wish I had never known. The only way to turn our well-padded middle schoolers on to verse, it seems, is to market Emily Dickinson like, say, Lunchables. Why simply "read" poems when you can cram them like the literary bagel bites they are? And it is no accident, comrades, that the jingle for the aforementioned product thematically resembles the anthology’s title entry.
As an amuse-bouche, relish these mouth-watering lines from The Waste Land (not included in the anthology, sadly):
"That corpse you planted last year in your garden,Just delectable. Dig in, kids.
"Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
"Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
"O keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
"Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
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