Some of you know Luke Stromberg from West Chester. He just posted this on Facebook, and I think we owe him thanks for it.

The Tarantula
By Reed Whittemoore

Everyone thinks I am poisonous. I am not.
Look up and read the authorities on me, especially
One Alexander Petrunkevitch, of Yale, now retired,
Who has said of me (and I quote): my "bite is dangerous
*Only*
To insects and small mammals such as mice."
I would have you notice that "only"; that is important,
As you who are neither insect or mouse can appreciate.
I have to live as you do,
And how would you like it if someone construed your relations
With the chicken, say, as proof of your propensities?
Furthermore,
Petrunkevitch has observed, and I can vouch for it,
That I am myopic, lonely and retiring. When I am born
I dig a burrow for me, and me alone,
And live in it all my life except when I come
Up for food and love (in my case the latter
Is not really satisfactory: I
"Wander about after dark in search of females,
And occasionally stray into houses," after which I
Die.) How does that sound?
Furthermore,
I have to cope with the digger wasp of the genus
Pepsis; and despite my renown as a killer (nonsense, of course),
I can't. Petrunkevitch says no.
Read him. He's good on the subject. He's helped *me*.
Which brings me to my point here. You carry
This image about of me that is at once libelous
And discouraging, all because you, who should know better,
Find me ugly. So I am ugly. Does that mean that you
Should persecute me as you do? Read William Blake.
Read William Wordsworth.
Read Williams in general, I'd say. There was a book
By a William Tarantula once, a work of some consequence
In my world on the subject of beauty,
Beauty that's skin deep only, beauty that some
Charles (note the "Charles") of the Ritz can apply and take off
At will, beauty that-- but I digress.
What I am getting at
Is that you who are blessed (I have read) with understanding
Should understand me, little me. My name is William
Too.

Taxonomically speaking, "bug" is actually much, much narrower than "insect", referring only to the Order Hemiptera (50,000-80,000 species) within the Class Insecta (1,400,000-1,800,000 million species)...by which standard, not even ladybugs are bugs, and must be stodgily referred to as "ladybird beetles".

But if I insist on speaking taxonomically, I'll soon be speaking only to myself, as has happened on countless occasions. I concede that Mssrs. Merriam and Webster, Mr. Nash, and Mr. Slater are colloquially correct. Which matters far more for poetic purposes, anyway. Touché.

BTW, prompted by Mr. Russell's tantalizing hint above, I managed to dig up "The Cicadas" by Aldous Huxley online, here, but I won't make people scroll for it. I'll offer the usual caveat about the accuracy of scanned texts--the beginning of the scan says that the book is by "Huxlev" [sic], and some punctuation seems to be missing from the poem. Gorgeous anyway:


SIGHTLESS, I breathe and touch; this night of pines
Is needly, resinous and rough with bark.
Through every crevice in the tangible dark
The moonlessness above it all but shines.

Limp hangs the leafy sky; never a breeze
Stirs, nor a foot in all this sleeping ground;
And there is silence underneath the trees
The living silence of continuous sound.

For like inveterate remorse, like shrill
Delirium throbbing in the fevered brain,
An unseen people of cicadas fill
Night with their one harsh note, again, again.


[BTW again, Ms. Corbett, I thought I saw a tarantula (which I adore) on my front walk after dark last week, but on closer examination it looked hairless and squishy, so then I thought it might be a very large scorpion (which I'm not so wild about) or Jerusalem cricket (speaking of misnomers). But it turned out to be a solifuge, which I'd never known existed. Creepy, but cool.]

Julie, I think even taxonomists use the term "true bug" if they wish to limit themselves to hemipteras. At any rate, the non-taxonomy definition of "bug" is well established as a bona fide word and not merely a colloquialism (in the slightly pejorative sense that I detect in your usage).

My apologies. I meant "colloquial" to mean the way most people use the language, as opposed to either scientific jargon or other slang. No pejorative intended, despite my earlier crack about English majors.

When I was on a field trip to an aquarium long ago, every time someone mentioned jellyfish, the docent would pounce on us with a mini-sermon about how that's the wrong name, because they aren't fish, and we must call them "jellies" instead. But then the docent himself repeatedly used the term shellfish. I swore I'd never be like that when I grew up. Guess I shouldn't make promises I can't keep, huh?

***

I was looking for Rodney Jones' "The Mosquito", and came across D.H. Lawrence's "The Mosquito", too. Here and here. Swat! Swat!

***

[Edited to say: Maryann! The Alexander Petrunkevitch in the tarantula poem really was an authority on spiders! And a poet! A translator of poetry, in fact! How cool is that?]

Here's another Grasshopper, this time by Richard Wilbur:

A Grasshopper

But for a brief
Moment, a poised minute,
He paused on the chicory-leaf;
Yet within it

The sprung perch
Had time to absorb the shock,
Narrow its pitch and lurch,
Cease to rock.

A quiet spread
Over the neighbor ground;
No flower swayed its head
For yards around;

The wind shrank
Away with a swallowed hiss;
Caught in a widening blank
Parenthesis,

Cry upon cry
Faltered and faded out;
Everything seemed to die.
Oh, without doubt

Peace like a plague
Had gone to the world's verge,
But that an aimless, vague
Grasshopper-urge

Leapt him aloft,
giving the leaf a kick,
Starting the grasses' soft
Chase and tick,

So that the sleeping
Crickets resumed their chimes,
And all things wakened, keeping
Their several times.

In gay release
The whole field did what it did,
Peaceful now that its peace
Lay busily hid.



Peter has already mentioned his "Mayflies", one of the greatest insect poems. There's also his Cicadas from his first book, The Beautiful Changes.

And a few lines from "An Essay on Man" show Pope identifying with the insect-world:

The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine!
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line:
In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true
From pois'nous herbs extracts the healing dew.

Jonathan Swift:

So nat'ralists observe, a flea
Hath smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller fleas to bite 'em
And so proceeds ad infinitum.

One of these articles claims that Shakespeare mentioned insects in all but two of his plays. The articles quote many examples:

http://www.sacred-texts.com/sks/flos/flos11.htm

http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/schol...1-body-d2.html

This isn't exactly an insect-only theme but a dragonflies are prominent:) Gerard Manley Hopkins -- As Kingfishers Catch Fire. Also for anyone interested, Regis University (Denver) hosts an annual Hopkins conference in the spring -- wonderful. I went last year (I teach for them on-line) and plan on sending in a proposal this year -- check out the website to hear this poem read --sprung rhythm really comes alive when it's read well --three poems on this website read by Richard Austin

http://www.regis.edu/Event-Promotion...onference.aspx

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

Four-Word Lines

May Swenson

Your eyes are just
like bees, and I
feel like a flower.
Their brown power makes
a breeze go over
my skin. When your
lashes ride down and
rise like brown bees’
legs, your prolonged gaze
makes my eyes gauze.
I wish we were
in some shade and
no swarm of other
eyes to know that
I’m a flower breathing
bare, laid open to
your bees’ warm stare.
I’d let you wade
in me and seize
with your eager brown
bees’ power a sweet
glistening at my core.