Poem of the day
The Spider
He took no heed of me upon my writing table,
creeping assiduously along as best as he was able.
I stayed my hand and killed him not in tribute to his defiance,
his nonchalance, his aplomb, in strolling among giants.
-- Anonymous
He took no heed of me upon my writing table,
creeping assiduously along as best as he was able.
I stayed my hand and killed him not in tribute to his defiance,
his nonchalance, his aplomb, in strolling among giants.
-- Anonymous
posted by Wonderdog | 12:58 AM | Permalink
|
13 comments
13 Comments:
I would be anon too if I was a spider murderer. I would call PETA on that guy if he would have the guts to come foreward and announce himself. I hope he is sailing some day and goes into a funny fog and becomes the Incredible Shrinking Man II and has to take on a black widow with a sewing needle.
I think Anon is a poster boy for PETA -- he killed him [the spider] NOT, and he also ascribes all sorts of human qualities and motivations to the spider. Maybe Peter Singer wrote it.
Is anyone else here like me about letting certain kinds of spiders (usually the wispy, long-legged ones) live when I find them in corners? We also try to catch crickets and let them outside when we find them in the house -- my dad always told us crickets were lucky.
On the other hand, I have found some BIG black widows in the backyard. That I don't like so much, and I'm not as kind to them as I am to lizards and other denizens of the backyard.
KM, I am torn between leaving spiders to eat other bugs and killing them so they don't reproduce. Usually I choose the latter, though, as nearly every one of them is hairy and scary looking -- unlike the "daddy long legs" I remember from my youth. We don't need to be listening to the rugrat screaming about bugs.
For the most part I don't mess with the outside wildlife. But if it were allowed, I'd have me a deer hunt out back.
Oh and for you PETA people, I have found a legal way to hunt deer here. Alas our property isn't big enough. But if I can get 3 more neighbors with adjacent properties to go along, we'll be eating venison.
Oh I get it. "I killed him not. . . " I read it as I killed him, not in tribute to his defiance, but for another reason.
Nevermind
Rosanna Rosannadanna
I wish that "stayed" were not there and that the reader were left to pause before or after the "not."
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
On second thought ... I like the poem precisely as it is.
Wonderdog, did you write it?
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
The itsy bitzy spider climed up the water spout.
Then the Bloggers on Rumpus voted him off the island and had him whacked.
The end.
Good question, Jeffery. Wonderdog?
Wonderdog has been outed.
Pretty good for a lawyer, WD.
Uh...That's what comes of late night salsa and chips, I guess. I didn't really spare the little bugger because of his aplomb. I think, instead, it came from a general lethargy. Too much salsa makes too much inertia.
Jeffery Gypsy, I actually prefer your suggested revision. It lends an ambiguous emphasis to a rather ambiguous undertaking.
Wonderdog, if you want to change it, then perhaps you could change "stayed" to "strayed" and have it read:
The Spider
He took no heed of me
upon my writing table,
creeping assiduously along
as best as he was able.
I strayed my hand
and killed him not in tribute to his defiance,
his nonchalance, his aplomb,
in strolling among giants.
This would be a misuse of "strayed" as a transitive verb to achieve ambiguity, but you would have poetic license and a lawyer's training to defend it.
Yet I think that my second thoughts were right and that your original version is best.
By the way, the internal line breaks are only for making the lines fit into the comments column.
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
Jeffery, I guess I'll let it stand. Rather than ambiguity, I think it's more important to find a clear moral in all of this. You'll find the moral under the more recent post on the the blog titled, "The Spider Part Deux".
Post a Comment
<< Home