[John Whitworth]

You could be right there, Jerome. They gave some other examples which I forget, but they were (I think) all mammals. Would that cut out Burns's address to a louse? It would.

[Roger Slater]

In what world are birds not animals, Jerome? If they wanted to make exceptions, they could have just done so without expecting us to figure that they were purposely misusing words.

I'm having trouble finding very many poems at all that are addressed to animals. There are many poems about animals, but most of them are in the third person. We need to keep birds unless this is to be a Tyger and Mouse competition entirely.

PS--
I cross posted with John. But I still say that animals are animals, with the exception of humans since that would make the entire competition pointless. If birds are not included, then what about non-mammals like frogs or alligators? Not that I can think of any poems addressing frogs or alligators, mind you.

[Jerome Betts]

Roger, if John is right that they gave other examples and they were mammals, I think this suggests they were using the word animals in the everyday sense where people do after all distinguish between birds and animals and, as John notes, insects. Still, we need the actual rubric to check, but the NS is rara avis in my neck of the woods. Er . . . reptiles? (Did Lawrence actually talk to that snake or just about it?)

[Roger Slater]

So your understanding of common speech would admit amphibians into the animal kingdom? We are only to exclude birds and bugs and human beings? What about fish?

I think in everyday use, as well, people do call birds animals. I have toddler vocabulary cards, for example, that are meant to teach toddlers how to put things in categories, and birds are in the animal category.

It seems to me that when an editor uses the word "animal" it should be understood according to its definition, and that's that. Even then, though, our choices are limited.

[Roger Slater]

I found a children's book called "Animal Poems" on Amazon, and it apparently contains poems about wasps, fish and hummingbirds as well as standard furry creatures.

http://www.amazon.com/Animal-Poems-V.../dp/0374380570

[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.