[Roger Slater]

And John Hollander edited an Everyman anthology called "Animal Poems," and the table of contents shows poems about robins, larks, mocking birds, oven birds, darkling thrushes, eagles, crows, hawks, owls, as well as fleas, flies, bees and wasps and snails and slugs and worms.

http://www.amazon.com/Animal-Poems-E...5903202&sr=8-3

[Julie Steiner]

Just preface your poem with a bit of taxonomic justification: Kingdom Animalia, Phylum Porifera, etc.

Now, to find a poem addressed to a sponge...

[John Whitworth]

It's true that if we restrict the thing to mammals then there are not many examples. Though Keats has a jolly good sonnet to a cat and I think both Hardy and Matthew Arnold address dogs. Hilaire Belloc has four lines to a rhinoceros.

Rhinoceros, your hide looks all undone.
You do not take my fancy in the least.
You have a horn where other brutes have none.
Rhinoceros, you are an ugly beast.

But including birds really opens the thing up. Shelley talks to a skylark and Wallace Stevens to a chicken. And John Skelton at great length to a parrot.

I will check the exact wording and report back.

PS And W.S. Gilbert to a little tom-tit.

[Julie Steiner]

Hey! Oliver Wendell Holmes' "The Chambered Nautilus"!
http://www.bartleby.com/102/107.html

I remember "helping" my oh-so-serious older sister memorize it when she was in high school and I was in middle school. She would lock herself in the bathroom to practice her grand gestures before the mirror. Every time she got to the "Cast from her lap, forlorn!" bit, I'd yell through the door, "Who milked the cow with the crumpled horn!" Then she'd come tearing out of there, absolutely livid. She even caught me once, but it was totally worth it. Ah, sweet memories...

I have no time to do anything with it, so anyone else should feel free. It might not be a recognizable poem to the judges, though.

[Jerome Betts]

Thanks, John. We'll find out then if the rubric is loosely or ambiguously worded, or whether the examples were carelessly chosen.

Re frogs, didn't Mrs Leo Hunter in Pickwick address some lines to an expiring frog?

Cowper addressed some verses to a spaniel, and then provided the spaniel's reply. Engaging stuff.

[Roger Slater]

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.

[Martin Parker]

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.

[Ann Drysdale]

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]

[John Whitworth]

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.