Poetry Response 3

I read Allastair Reid's poem "Curiosity." It is based on the cliche "curiosity killed the cat," which is traditionally meant to discourage curiousity, because exploring the unknown can often come at a price. However, Reid's take on this idea is a little different. Reid sees curiosity as a good thing; he suggests that there is no reason to live if you are not curious. His whole poem is an extended metaphor using the cat to represent the curious, and the dog to represent those who do not care to know what's outside of their back yard fence. Using these metaphors, Reid says that the boredom and repetition in day to day life will kill you if you are not curious, rather than curiosity, the alternative. Being curious is worth the risk because "only the curious have, if they live, a tale worth telling at all." Reid then goes on to describe the danger and consequences of curiosity: there is always a chance that you might suffer for it, but the curious accept this as a price to pay for having lived. As he puts it, "Let them be nine lived and contradictory,/ curious enough to change, prepared to pay/ the cat price, which is to die/ and die again, each ti
e with no less pain." Reid then reinforces the idea that this daring way of living is good by saying that being curious teaches you that dying, or suffering consequences, is what you must do to truly live and love and experience the world, and that the ignorant "dogs" will die without realizing that death is the consequence for having lived, so you might as well make the most of it. I like Reid's perspective of life.