I'm an American who got linked via a google search for dung beetle poems -- I was looking for one by Michael Blumenthal, but I've enjoyed yours, too.
This article made me want to point you to a poem called "Slugs Amorous in the Air" by the U.S. poet William Pitt Root. It is astonishingly sensuous and beautiful -- I read it aloud once at the Library of Congress, telling the audience, "This is one of the sexiest poems I've ever read -- and it's about slugs." They cringed, but as the poem unfolded, I could see them coming to agree with me.
I'm working on an anthology of what I call 'bug' poems -- garden pests, not necessarily just insects. They get used for an astonishingly wide range of metaphors. Best wishes to you. I hope you don't really bring this blog to an end -- it's wonderfully literate, and full of things I don't know.
Laura, I wish I could have been in your audience. I've looked up and very much enjoyed the poetry of yours that's on the web (and hope to read more!) and I love the anthology theme. Have you read "Insect Lives: Stories of Mystery and Romance from a Hidden World" edited by Erich Hoyt and Ted Schultz? It's one of my favourite books, and has some brilliant poetry in it, too, though it was you who unearthed this gem of Mr Root's, "Slugs Amorous in the Air". I hope he is happy that it can be read online here, for it's a treasure for the finding: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0GER/is_1998_Spring/ai_53884972
Very pleased to learn that this sort of thing is happening at the Library of Congress.
Thank you very much for your comment and encouragement, though this might be feeding a pupating monster. It's encouraging me to continue this blog that I should have called The Perpetual Amateur, as there is nothing that I've brought up in it in which I am any sort of expert.
I'm an American who got linked via a google search for dung beetle poems -- I was looking for one by Michael Blumenthal, but I've enjoyed yours, too.
ReplyDeleteThis article made me want to point you to a poem called "Slugs Amorous in the Air" by the U.S. poet William Pitt Root. It is astonishingly sensuous and beautiful -- I read it aloud once at the Library of Congress, telling the audience, "This is one of the sexiest poems I've ever read -- and it's about slugs." They cringed, but as the poem unfolded, I could see them coming to agree with me.
I'm working on an anthology of what I call 'bug' poems -- garden pests, not necessarily just insects. They get used for an astonishingly wide range of metaphors.
Best wishes to you. I hope you don't really bring this blog to an end -- it's wonderfully literate, and full of things I don't know.
Laura Fargas
Laura,
ReplyDeleteI wish I could have been in your audience. I've looked up and very much enjoyed the poetry of yours that's on the web (and hope to read more!) and I love the anthology theme. Have you read "Insect Lives: Stories of Mystery and Romance from a Hidden World" edited by Erich Hoyt and Ted Schultz? It's one of my favourite books, and has some brilliant poetry in it, too, though it was you who unearthed this gem of Mr Root's, "Slugs Amorous in the Air".
I hope he is happy that it can be read online here, for it's a treasure for the finding:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0GER/is_1998_Spring/ai_53884972
Very pleased to learn that this sort of thing is happening at the Library of Congress.
Thank you very much for your comment and encouragement, though this might be feeding a pupating monster. It's encouraging me to continue this blog that I should have called The Perpetual Amateur, as there is nothing that I've brought up in it in which I am any sort of expert.