"beware : do not read this poem" by Ishmael Reed - External Form

I chose beware : do not read this poem because of its interesting title. It’s merely reverse psychology. Don’t read it? Ok I will. Anyways, the poem is very free form and the poet, Ishmael Reed, has done some interesting things with internal form, mainly with the use of white space and punctuation.(Like Cummings)

Externally, the stanzas are split into three parts. The first 3 stanzas are based around the story of a witch in her haunted house of mirrors. The next two stanzas are about poetry and how they compare to animals and mirrors. Finally the last stanza gives a statistic.

The first three stanzas don’t really make sense other than setting up the mirrors comparison. From my research, Thriller was a show back in the 60s and this particular narrative was one of the episodes they ran. Why any of this happened is not certain and the poet never explains but mainly, this section is to set up the concept of mirrors and their devouring nature.

The next section is once again a look at the power of words and poetry and how they devour people, even the reader who is devoured to the waist. The poem doesn’t ask people to devour, it just does. The poet tells us to go with the flow and not resist. Poems are compared to mirrors which we know to be devouring and lonely because of the way they draw people in.

The statistic is an interesting feature. It seems to suggest that poetry has such a strong effect on people that it causes people to disappear.

The entire poem is very odd. The odd punctuation, capitalization are used mainly to create unease and distress. The white space serves more purpose, to show loss and disappearance. “a space in the lives of their friends” is an especially useful line for showing Reed’s intention because of the space between the word space and in.