Blake's Fly Replies

Little Man,
Thy stupid verse
Hath made thy blunder
All the worse.

Although I know
Thy thoughtless hand
Destroyed my life,
I understand.

Accidents
Will happen, true,
But don't exploit them
When they do.

You murdered me,
And yet your gaffe
Was writing me
That epitaph.

Verse 4 of AA Milne's IN THE FASHION is addressed by Christopher Robin (in his imagination) to the Lion. Do you think the following fits the Comp's rules?


The Lion replies to Christopher Robin

Yes, I’m a lion and I’ve got a tail
And so has the elephant and so has the whale
And so has the crocodile and also the quail.
But your tail’s not like ours.

To you a tail is no damned use.
You’re a perfect example of tail abuse.
Besides, it’s a clip-on and sure to work loose
In less than a couple of hours.

For human beings it’s really a silly act
To fix a tail to their sacro-iliac --
A wholly redundant, daft willy-nilly act,
Like spraying scent on flowers.

For us a tail is a vital tool
As well as looking extremely cool.
But you’ll get hell when you go to school
And they see yours in the showers.

Since we are dealing with British humour here, perhaps we should give the last word on the vexed question of taxonomy to the caption of one of our more famous cartoons:


Railway Porter (to Old Lady traveling with a Menagerie of Pets).
“‘STATION MASTER SAY, MUM, AS CATS IS ‘DOGS,’ AND RABBITS IS ‘DOGS,’ AND SO’S PARROTS; BUT THIS ‘ERE ‘TORTIS’ IS A INSECT, SO THERE AIN’T NO CHARGE FOR IT!”
[Punch, 1869, Vol. 57, p. 96]

Martin I'm sure it does. I had another peek at the newsagents and the comp mentions a poem to a caterpillar and another to a toad, so I think we can take it that a bird is an animal. And a tortoise of course is a hinsect.

Thanks again, John. It seems the NS setter doesn't monitor Lucy and may find his laptop bulging with revived cuckoos and nightingales.

I think in everyday use, as well, people do call birds animals.

Roger, I don't want to turn this into the Iratosphere, but I would like an example.
Do you come home from holiday and say "I saw some really interesting animals while I was away" when you're actually referring to Double-Breasted Weevil-Eaters or Regency-Striped Grackles?

Or excuse your lateness by saying "5th Avenue was blocked by animals" (? horses ? circus elephants) when it was actually raining moribund cuckoos and nightingales? :)

Ann, I've got that volume and it flitted through my mind, but the picture would exceed Esphere's byte limit.

Jerome, I realize that there are some colloquial nuances involved, but we're dealing here with poems, and, as I've pointed out, books of "animal poems" typically include poems about insects and birds. This is true of both children's books and adult books. The John Hollander book is an example of the latter. I doubt many people would open his book and say, "What the hell is this poem doing here? It's about an eagle, but an eagle isn't an animal. And why is there a poem about a bee? A bee isn't an animal!"

In the colloquial examples you gave, I think the tendency is to be as specific as possible. If you saw a lot of birds, you'd say "I saw birds." You wouldn't say "I saw animals," but you also wouldn't say "I saw living creatures," though we can both agree that the latter would be perfectly true. I think that if you saw birds, cats, lions and elephants, you'd say "I saw animals," and if someone asked you, "Did you see any animals?", you would answer yes even if all you saw were birds.

I can't resist inserting here a poem by Mary Holtby, which I think would be a winner if it could be entered:

The Tyger's Reply to Blake

Meagre, meagre little man,
Mouth your verses while you can.
Every predator despises
Metaphysical surmises.

Yet I'm forced to ask myself
From what dim and dusty shelf
Did the Source of Being fetch
Such a miserable wretch?

What the pleasure, what the gain?
In what ferment was His brain
Who aftet sun and star and cat
Formed so poor a thing as that,

Neither swift nor sage nor good,
Scarcely palatable food?
Yet how impertinently Man
Dares speculate how I began!

(from The Muse Strikes Back, A Poetic Response by Women to Men)

Nice one, Gail

Roger, I don't disagree with anything in your last post except the final sentence. I think that if you saw birds, cats, lions and elephants, you'd say "I saw animals," and if someone asked you, "Did you see any animals?", you would answer yes even if all you saw were birds.
I'm pretty sure I would say 'birds and animals' in the first case. In the second a plain 'Yes' would be misleading and need expansion, so I would probably say "No, but there were a lot of birds."

I'm genuinely curious about this, and hope I'm not developing a tin ear.

Anyway, now John has clarified the rubrics, good luck with your entries, whether fur, feather, fish, fly or frog.

Jerome, I do agree that there is a colloquial tendency to be more specific when we are speaking about certain kinds of animals, so we say "birds" rather than animals if all the animals in question were birds, and the same kind of thing happens with frogs and insects. When it comes to mammals, though, we tend to say "animals" instead of mammals. But I think this is a mere tendency to use the specific term, and doesn't mean that people don't think of birds and frogs as animals as well.

Oddly enough, the few dictionaries I have consulted do not explore any of these issues in their definitions of animals. Whlle some allow that people will often use "animal" as distinct from "human being," even though humans are technically animals, I haven't found any that suggest "animal" is an unacceptable colloquial term for non-mammal creatures.

But I agree with you to a certain extent. I'd hate to think that when people tell me I have "animal magnetism," the animal they are referring to is a cockroach.

toujours gai, roger, toujours gai