Back to Basics

A tongue-tied Poet in the feverous days,
That, setting the how much before the how,
Cry, like the daughters of the horseleech, ‘Give,
Cram us with all,’ but count not me the herd!

from "The Golden Year"

I am aware that horseleeches are real things, and that daughters of horseleeches are also real things, but it was much more fun for me to reimagine the concept this way. Behold the luscious lips of her posterior and anterior suckers! Doesn't she look like she wants to be crammed with all?

It's interesting to note how horses have been a theme with all the poets we have celebrated. I am doing my best to carry on this tradition in my own way: as most of you know, I am hard at work on a manuscript tentatively titled Whinny with Both Pairs of Lips, O Ponies, which I hope to illustrate with drawings in the same tradition as the one shown above.