[Julie Steiner]

If uninvited arachnids wish to colonize this thread, Dickinson's poem above states eloquently that I can't do much about it. (Which reminds me--scorpions are arachnids, too, and there are several wonderful poems about them.)

But to return to insects...their metamorphosis is often given spiritual connotations, so Stanley Kunitz's "Hornworm: Autumn Lamentation" might be taken as someone's reluctant acceptance of the idea that there will be no transformation after death. (In fact, I found the poem text--you'll need to scroll down to it--on an atheistic website.) But I prefer to think of this poem as a very accurate description of what it feels like when family and work obligations are sucking the very life out of me, and robbing me of the time and energy to indulge in apparently selfish (but transformative) activities like my poetry and music.

Thanks, all, for your contributions. I'm really enjoying them.

[Gail White]

The verse that instantly came into my mind was Vachel Lindsay's:

The grasshopper, the grasshopper,
I will explain to you,
He is the brownie's racehorse,
The fairy's kangaroo.

Well, they can't all be gems.

[Maryann Corbett]

Thanks especially for the hornworm, Julie.

If arachnids are permitted, this one by Walt Whitman has to be included:


A NOISELESS, patient spider,
I mark’d, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them—ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,—seeking the spheres, to connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form’d—till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.

[Shaun J. Russell]

"The Cicadas" by Aldous Huxley is a good example. Sadly, I can't seem to find it online, and it's too long for me to type in. Huxley was underrated as a poet, though.

[Catherine Chandler]

"The Ant Lion" by my friend and mentor, Eric Ormsby. From Time's Covenant: Selected Poems, page 100. It differs in many respects from the original "Antlion" published in The New Yorker on November 1, 1993.

The Ant Lion

Beneath your shoe soles there's a beautiful
Concavity of sand, a symmetrical
Funnel the width of a small boy's thumb.
It looks expertly smooth. Precarious
Sand grains have been set to slide
Whenever a plodding ant's insouciance
Pitches it down that soft declivity.
The owner of the pit abides down there,
A drab predator the colour of
Quarry rock, old spackle, gypsum, slate.
Earth-coloured, with the shadows of the earth,
He snuggles in the hollow of his snare.

At night, in childhood, I would sometimes dream
Of the panicky scrambles of a slipping ant,
Its scurrying despair that swept it down
Irresistibly along the volatile sand.
The way that dreams deceive you the ant fell,
And I, asleep, felt falling, too,
Through filmy floorboards into avalanche
As the heart-stopped terror of my helpless dream
Tossed me to the steep mouth of the pit.

There, with upswung jaws, the ant lion
Wiggled out of ambush, rushed to hug
Me, his frantic victim, in a pinch. That
Too had the horrible embrace of dream
Where you choke those you love or they choke you
And everything takes place mechanically
Despite the shrieked beseeching of your will.

After the waving prey is tugged below
To be consumed in secret, beneath the dirt,
The ant lion's slow return looks dreamlike too.
There's a proprietary fussiness,
Meticulous, almost suburban, as
The little killer scrapes its whirlpool smooth.




Eric has also written another gorgeous insect poem, the three-part "Spiders", on pages 38-39 of the above mentioned volume.

[Julie Steiner]

Lots of children's poems and songs feature insects. (Even if you've studied only a smattering of a foreign language, you might want to consider translating one of those for the Translation Bake-Off. Hint, hint.)

One of my faves in English (on p. 6 of The Twentieth Century Children's Poetry Treasury, edited by Jack Prelutsky):


Butterfly Cloth
by Victoria Forrester

How fragile
Floats the butterfly,
A banner barely cloth.
Woven of sterner stuff
It seems,
The tapestry of moth.


So simple! Yet there's so much going on. I love the economy of the implied contrast between air-waved banner and wall-hugging tapestry. I'm tickled that the sonics seem to underscore the similarities of these two creatures (the voiced and unvoiced puffs of th/th and f/v throughout), while simultaneously communicating the different wing textures (the first half's l and b give way to the second half's st and s and t). The unorthodox lineation works for me, too. And oh, that abrupt difference in the meter in the first foot of L4...

Okay, maybe I'm easily entertained, but I like it.

[Edited to add--Thanks, Catherine, for Ormsby's "The Ant Lion". Quite different from Timothy Murphy's "The Ant Lion", here.]

[Roger Slater]

I noticed as well that googling "insect poems" produces primarily children's poems, a fact that should not have surprised me considering that I myself have an (unpublished) manuscript of children's poems about insects and was under no illusion that I was the first. When I googled in other languages, though, I found that the insect poems tended to have a greater mix of poems written for adults. Go figure.

[Roger Slater]

Forgotten Language
by Shel Silverstein

Once I spoke the language of the flowers,
Once I understood each word the caterpillar said,
Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings,
And shared a conversation with the housefly
in my bed.
Once I heard and answered all the questions
of the crickets,
And joined the crying of each falling dying
flake of snow,
Once I spoke the language of the flowers. . . .
How did it go?
How did it go?

[Mary Meriam]

Hilda Doolittle (H.D.)
Fragment 113
Neither honey nor bee for me

Not honey,
not the plunder of the bee
from meadow or sand-flower
or mountain bush;
from winter-flower or shoot
born of the later heat:
not honey, not the sweet
stain on the lips and teeth:
not honey, not the deep
plunge of soft belly
and the clinging of the gold-edged
pollen-dusted feet.

Not so—
though rapture blind my eyes,
and hunger crisp
dark and inert my mouth,
not honey, not the south,
not the tall stalk
of red twin-lilies,
nor light branch of fruit tree
caught in flexible light branch.

Not honey, not the south;
ah flower of purple iris,
flower of white,
or of the iris, withering the grass—
for fleck of the sun's fire,
gathers such heat and power,
that shadow-print is light,
cast through the petals
of the yellow iris flower.

Not iris—old desire—old passion—
old forgetfulness—old pain—
not this, nor any flower,
but if you turn again,
seek strength of arm and throat,
touch as the god;
neglect the lyre-note;
knowing that you shall feel,
about the frame,
no trembling of the string
but heat, more passionate
of bone and the white shell
and fiery tempered steel.

[Orwn Acra]

Edwin Morgan:

Orgy

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