Classic and Contemporary Poetry
ESSAY, by HAYDEN CARRUTH Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: So many poems about the deaths of animals Last Line: But clearly they do not bother to say good-bye Subject(s): Animal Rights; Biology & Biologists; Extinct Animals; Animal Abuse; Vivisection | ||||||||
So many poems about the deaths of animals. Wilbur's toad, Kinnell's porcupine, Eberhart's squirrel, and that poem by someone -- Hecht? Merrill? -- about cremating a woodchuck. But mostly I remember the outrageous number of them, as if every poet, I too, had written at least one animal elegy; with the result that today when I came to a good enough poem by Edwin Brock about finding a dead fox at the edge of the sea I could not respond; as if permanent shock had deadened me. And then after a moment I began to give way to sorrow (watching myself sorrowlessly the while), not merely because part of my being had been violated and annulled, but because all these many poems over the years have been necessary -- suitable and correct. This has been the time of the finishing off of the animals. They are going away -- their fur and their wild eyes, their voices. Deer leap and leap in front of the screaming snowmobiles until they leap out of existence. Hawks circle once or twice above their shattered nests and then they climb to the stars. I have lived with them fifty years, we have lived with them fifty million years, and now they are going, almost gone. I don't know if the animals are capable of reproach. But clearly they do not bother to say good-bye. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE ARTIC OX by MARIANNE MOORE MARY'S LAMB by SARAH JOSEPHA BUELL HALE PLEA FOR A CAPTIVE by WILLIAM STANLEY MERWIN SING-SONG; A NURSERY RHYME BOOK: 97 by CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI KINDNESS TO ANIMALS by JOSEPH ASHBY-STERRY PET'S PUNISHMENT by JOSEPH ASHBY-STERRY THE WILD HORSE by MARY ANN BROWNE I'VE NEVER SEEN SUCH A REAL HARD TIME BEFORE' by HAYDEN CARRUTH THE WORLD AS WILL AND REPRESENTATION' by HAYDEN CARRUTH A POST-IMPRESSIONIST SUSURRATION FOR THE FIRST OF NOVEMBER by HAYDEN CARRUTH |
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