Intoxication In Koch's 'To High Spirits'

Intoxication, by definition, is being in a state of disarray; essentially not knowing what is going on. There are many different types of intoxication. One example, which is highly regarded as being the most used type of intoxication, is alcohol intoxication. This is when someone has drank too much alcohol, causing them to become drunk. Someone can also be intoxicated in love, which is when a person basically becomes obsessed with another person. Another type of intoxication, which is the one I would like to focus on, is what I would call intoxication of the mind. What I mean by this, is that people become intoxicated to a point where they do not act like themselves. Kenneth Koch from the New York School of Poets has written many poems and one specifically talks about intoxication. While the manifest content talks about intoxication in terms of alcohol, I think if you look into the latent meaning you can see he is talking about a whole lot more than alcohol. Intoxication of the mind causes you to be something you are not for a number of reasons. In Koch’s poem “To High Spirits”, Koch
Artist, Kendrick Lamar sings about intoxication in his song “Swimming Pools”. Contrary to Koch who talks about intoxication more in a sense of losing your feeling of worth and becoming something you’re not, Lamar’s version of intoxication is more to the point of being something that you do not want to be, and wishing you were something else. For example, someone with a low paying stressful job may become intoxicated with jealousy towards someone who makes millions of dollars a year doing nothing while his employees do all of the work. I was intrigued by Lamar’s line “Some people like the way it feels, some people wanna kill their sorrows” I think he, like Koch, is talking about alcohol but also trying to say how some love to be intoxicated with certain feelings, while others hates the way it makes them