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The Spider and the Ghost of the Fly
BY VACHEL LINDSAY Once I loved a spider When I was born a fly, A velvet-footed spider With a gown of rainbow-dye. She ate my wings and gloated. She bound me with a hair. She drove me to her parlor Above her winding stair. To educate young spiders She took me all apart. My ghost came back to haunt her. I saw her eat my heart. |
The Vachel Lindsay poem I just posted has echoes of the Mary Howitt poem that Lewis Carroll later parodied. The Howitt poem begins:
"Will you walk into my parlor?" said the spider to the fly; "'Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy. The way into my parlor is up a winding stair, And I have many pretty things to show when you are there." "O no, no," said the little fly, "To ask me is in vain, For who goes up your winding stair can ne'er come down again." |
My Work Among the Insects - Dean Young
The body of the lingerneedle is filled with hemolymph unconstricted except for a single dorsal vessel. A ventral diaphragm bathes the organs of the head, undulations drawing the fluid back through tiny holes called ostia aided by the movement of a Napoleon within each abdominal segment pacing his Elba exile, muttering la Russie la Russie as the snow squeaks beneath his boots. All through the night the temperature drops but no one knows where the lingerneedle goes. Yet it emerges each spring like a baseball team. Gertrude Stein may have been referring to this when she wrote, A hurried heaving is a quartz confinement, although what we normally think of as referring is brought into question by her work. A hive of white suching. At the time of her death, she owned many valuable paintings renowned for ugliness. Gertrude Stein grew up in Oakland but an Oakland as we know it not. No plastic bags snagged in the trees. Semi- automatics had yet to reach the fifth grade. A person could stand in a field, naked and singing. Sure, there was blood but there were rags for wiping up the blood. Deciduous trees, often confused by California climes, just bloom whenthehellever like how people have sex in French movies. Here, during the cool evenings and hot mid-days, the mild winters and resistive texts, the lingerneedle thrives. Upon the ruddy live oak leaves appears its first instar, spit-like but changing shortly to a messy lace erupting into many-legged, heavy-winged adults that want only to mate. Often in July, one finds them collapsed in the tub, unable to gain purchase on the porcelain that seems to attract them mightily. It is best not to make everything a metaphor of one's own life but many have pressed themselves against cool and smooth, in love and doomed. Truly the earth hurtles through the cosmos at an alarming rate. Recent research suggests a gummy discharge of the mating pair has promise as an anti-coagulant. Please, more money is needed. The sun sets. The air turns chilly and full of jasmine. |
I'm loving these--mostly new to me. Thank you so much.
("California / dimes" in S8 of the Dean Young poem must be a typo for "California / climes", no? It seems unlikely that he's referring to $10 bags of marijuana. It seems to be "dimes" in all the versions I can find online, though.) Another bee poem, to add to the swarm: Beelines by M. A. Griffiths Out of the drowsing singing vessel comes the bee in neat-nap velvet, black and gold, armed as fiercely as a paladin. She possesses what I lack, the call of purpose. She mounts the air, homing in on golden gales of nectar trails, draws her sisters to her treasure, dancer in the templed hive, the singing dome, packed with shining wax and generation’s curl and clusters. Out of the droning honeyed vessel comes the bee, and another and another on a quest through scented strata, armed like knights, like amazons. Out of the sleepy humming vessel comes the bee, bright with purpose, fast as a star in her task, emblem of what I lack. Sister in the wind, mistress of the sun, small dynamo of summer. The power that I lack. Out of the throbbing solar vessel come the sisters, gold and black. October 2004 Grasshopper: The Poetry of M A Griffiths, p. 36; although I've edited the above a bit, in light of a hard copy draft her friend David Adkins sent me a photocopy of. Bees also feature in Griffiths' "Firstborn" (p. 119) and "The Poet's Wife" (p. 246). The latter poem was probably inspired, or at least influenced, by the relationship between Ted Hughes and Silvia Plath (author of the bee poem that Maryann posted above). |
Quote:
-Matt |
Three by Ogden Nash:
THE ANT The ant has made himself illustrious Through constant industry industrious. So what? Would you be calm and placid If you were full of formic acid? THE CENTIPEDE I objurgate the centipede, A bug we do not really need. At sleepy-time he beats a path Straight to the bedroom or the bath. You always wallop where he's not, Or, if he is, he makes a spot. THE WASP The wasp and all his numerous family I look upon as a major calamily. He throws open his nest with prodigality, But I distrust his waspitality. |
More Nash:
THE FLY God in His wisdom made the fly And then forgot to tell us why. THE TERMITE Some primal termite knocked on wood And tasted it, and found it good, And that is why your Cousin May Fell through the parlor floor today. |
And Nash again:
THE PRAYING MANTIS From whence arrived the praying mantis? From outer space, or lost Atlantis? I glimpse the grim, green metal mug That masks this pseudo-saintly bug, Orthopterous, also carnivorous, And faintly whisper, Lord deliver us. |
Yeah, it's hard to keep out centipedes when they're not wanted, too, Roger. I do love that poem, though. And Mr. Nash seemed to think it was a "bug". Sigh. English majors.
*** Robert Burns' "To a Mouse" is much better known, but he wrote "To a Louse" around the same time, in 1786. (With the subtitle "On Seeing One on a Lady's Bonnet, at Church.) It contains the immortal lines O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us! Here's the whole poem. |
Mr. Nash was right, Julie, since a "bug" is defined as "an insect or other creeping or crawling invertebrate (as a spider or centipede)" in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. "Bug" is a broader term than "insect."
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