I'm Feeling Kind of Literal Today

    A lizard in the midst of flames, a firebrand
that is life, asbestos-eyed asbestos-eared, with tattooed nap
       and permanent pig on
   the instep

--from "His Shield"

How, you might be wondering, is that amazing lizard surviving those flames? Maybe because instead of eyeballs, he has mesotheliomas. Maybe because instead of the more typical head-ears, he has two giant flame-retardant ones on his chest. Maybe because his crotchtoo is a constant source of spiritual and physical refreshment. And maybe, just maybe, because he is walking around on a cushy pair of imperishable pigs. Now, think how satisfying that bacon would be.

This Has Nothing to Do with Marianne Moore, Unless She Is Blogging from Beyond the Grave

It is high time I got a real blogroll going, I know. I read blogs for a living--it is one of these new jobs of the future--except you wouldn't know it because I am such a monumental silence-keeper in the comments department. I am always afraid of saying some wrong offensive thing by accident, which makes no sense, because wrong is the butter spread all over the offensive baguette of my interaction with every human being I have ever met. Also, I am one of these people who has never quite got used to the informality of the internet, and I secretly feel that everything I post should be at least well-considered, if not labored over. What a laughable idea. You know what, actually? I should start a blog comprised wholly of comments that I have almost posted. It would be updated about six times a day. Or, even better, it could be a communal blog, and everyone could reveal their almost-posted comments. Anyway, what I mean to say is that I probably read your blog, as well as your mom's blog, as well as your mom's blog written in the voice of her lapdog, but I will almost certainly leave some people off the list by mistake, so if you would feel like bursting if you weren't on it, drop a note in my comments and say hello.

P.S. Speaking of blogs, I know I've mentioned Reginald Shepherd here before, but as I continue to squeeze his posts to death within the gray coils of my fondness, I thought I would mention him again. He makes me feel that the world is full of good teachers! Go visit and allow him to tap your forehead with his boner of eloquence. Also, Sarah Sloat's blog is a huge, mule-shaped piñata of interestingness--I have no idea why I haven't visited it before.

My Sincerest Apologies

        It's an owl-and-a-pussy-

   both-content
   agreement.

from "Propriety"

I stumbled across this line and decided it was high time to revisit a certain marzipan vagina straight out of the past, just the way you like them. Honestly, though, I almost didn't have the heart to post this one. I mean, what is wrong with me? Kids come to this blog looking for help with their homework, and how do I thank them, with candy vagina owls! Am I not a child of God? Did my mother not raise me right? And the answer to that is, no to the second because no to the first. I was going to have the owussy saying something a little cleverer, like, "I am never so content as when I am digesting a girthy vole," but that seemed a little unwieldy when all was said and done, and in the end I could not resist the balls-to-the-wall elegance of all those Hoo HOOs.

The One on the Top Left Is Kafka, and the One on the Bottom Is Some Famous Dead Commie with His Snout Shot Full of Holes

The phrase in question is of course taken from the poem "Novices," in which context it is used to refer to authors, who are "'wonderful people, particularly those that/ write the most,'/ the masters of all languages, the supertadpoles of expression." My caricaturing skills do leave something to be desired, but I'll give you a hint: the one on the top right is totally Mark Twain! Anyway, on to business. Today's entry is an X-Treem Kulaburtiv F-Urt, for Elegant Choice contributed the facial configuration of one of the tadpoles. Excuse me, one of the supertadpoles. The super part is mostly attributable to the startling muscularity of their fully mature frog-legs. The expressions displayed by the supertadpoles are, in no particular order: Anguish: My Open Mouth Is Crammed Full of Red Ass; Indignation: This Tail-Tongue Is Not to Be Borne; Relish: Whose Would Not Salivate At the Thought of Licking Such a Double Eye; Weeping: How Do You Like Your Six-Nostrilled Cat-Pig Mr Death; Inscrutability: This Mustache Could Be Hiding Anything; and Reticence: You Can't Tell What Emotion My Face Is Showing Because This Mystique-Reeking Veil Obscures My Fleshy Lips. I'll give you a million dollars if you can guess which is the work of his small hands! Oh, you win, the man never passes up the chance to draw a princess.

Speaking of a million dollars, I want one of these so bad. Think how quickly I could produce new drawings if most of my time were not spent wrangling with with appalling inadequacies of the Paint program, not to mention a jerky mouse! Though I should probably figure out a way to buy a new camera first. You have no idea how much I wanted to superimpose an image of my own supernaturally-mobile face over one of the tadpole heads, but woe, it was impossible.

I Mean, Damn

In the Days of Prismatic Color

not in the days of Adam and Eve, but when Adam
   was alone; when there was no smoke and color was
fine, not with the refinement
   of early civilization art, but because
of its originality; with nothing to modify it but the

mist that went up, obliqueness was a variation
   of the perpendicular, plain to see and
to account for: it is no
   longer that; nor did the blue-red-yellow band
of incandescence that was color keep its stripe: it also is one of

those things into which much that is peculiar can be
   read; complexity is not a crime, but carry
it to the point of murkiness
   and nothing is plain. Complexity,
moreover, that has been committed to darkness, instead of

granting itself to be the pestilence that it is, moves all a-
   bout as if to bewilder us with the dismal
fallacy that insistence
   is the measure of achievement and that all
truth must be dark. Principally throat, sophistication is as it al-

ways has been--at the antipodes from the init-
   ial great truths. "Part of it was crawling, part of it
was about to crawl, the rest
   was torpid in its lair." In the short-legged, fit-
ful advance, the gurgling and all the minutiae--we have the
                                                   classic

multitude of feet. To what purpose! Truth is no Apollo
   Belvedere, no formal thing. The wave may go over if it likes.
Know that it will be there when it says,
   "I shall be there when the wave has gone by."

--Marianne Moore

Come on, what do I have to do to get one of you guys to dress up as Apollo Belvedere for me? Get totally naked, I am thinking, except for a rakish cardigan; grow a mustache and let a baby steal all your cows; record your sexy memories in a diary; turn all the crows black with your biting wit.

Time for Another Dashed-Off Mustachioed Blood Monster, This One Wearing a Question for Pants? Oh, I Think So

              Consistent with the
  formula--warm blood, no gills, two pairs of hands and a few
                                                    hairs--that

  is a mammal; there he sits in his own habitat,
      serge-clad, strong-shod.

--from "The Pangolin"

Warm blood? Check. No gills? Check. Two pairs of hands and a few hairs? Check and check. Strong-shod? Check. Serge-clad? Beyond your pitiful understanding, little ants of philosophy, and beyond your wildest dreams.

What This Party Needs Is Some Fetal Hobos

Magic bird, compound tongues, tramp baby swimming in amniotic seas--this one's got it all. The quote in question is taken, of course, from "Rescue with Yul Brynner," which boasts several other images ripe for interpretation: "like a grasshopper that did not/ know it missed the mower, a pygmy citizen;" "too slow a grower;" "elephant-borne dancer in silver spangled dress." Those will come later--the first, as soon as I determine whether grasshoppers have noses; the second, as soon as it seems decent to present another penis drawing; the third, as soon as I feel capable of placing my creative forceps on either side of a ballerina's face and tugging her forth from wrinkled gray loins.

Oh Yes And Please...

go bake a consumable for Sylvia Plath!

And Speaking of Whales

Sojourn in the Whale

Trying to open locked doors with a sword, threading
 the points of needles, planting shade trees
 upside down; swallowed by the opaqueness of one whom the
                                                      seas
love better than they love you, Ireland--

you have lived and lived on every kind of shortage.
 You have been compelled by hags to spin
 gold thread from straw and have heard men say:
"There is a feminine temperament in direct contrast to ours,

which makes her do these things. Circumscribed by a
 heritage of blindness and native
 incompetence, she will become wise and will be forced to give in.
Compelled by experience, she will turn back;

water seeks its own level":
 and you have smiled. "Water in motion is far
 from level." You have seen it, when obstacles happened to bar
the path, rise automatically.

--Marianne Moore

Note to Self: Marianne Moore Would Have Hated You, Probably; Screw a Tricorn Hat on Your Total Pea-Head and Get Back to Work!

Do you know, I never felt better in my life than when I was refusing to write poems "on principle"? I do not remember which principle exactly. I didn't write a single poem for six whole months, and I was happy like a pig snorting slop simultaneously up its nostrils and into its mouth. What I mean to say is that I should not have looked at my poetry word count today but I did, and discovered that I have only written 205 words in the last month and a half. I say more words to my cat in a single minute, since she likes for me to narrate all her activities and certain ones need elaborate description. Also, to make things worse, the 205 words are about string. As topics go, that one is super shitty! An intelligent person wouldn't have anything to say about string at all, except maybe when they discovered a whole huge tangle of it in the pillowy fish lips they were currently eating. Then they might write a book, and it would be remarkable, unlike the one I am writing which has no lips in it at all except for mine, which are ridiculous like a miniature clown's. A teacher even told me that once, that I should "be Pinocchio in a play"! What does that even mean? Also, what kind of play would that be? How would the whale look? Whoa, they could maybe dim all the lights and dangle huge glow-in-the-dark ribs from the ceiling, and then the whole audience would be in the whale! That would be great, and maybe make some booming indigestion noises from time to time. And I could maybe be perched on one of the ribs, bent over and dragging my wooden-boy lips all up and down it, because let some other fool play the puppet, I am busy being an intestinal parasite. Holy crap, I think I just talked myself out of my worst poetic disillusionment on record.

Hands Are a Particular Specialty of Mine

he let us know without offense
by his hands' denunciatory
upheaval, that he despised the fashion
of curing us with an ape

--from "Nothing Will Cure the Sick Lion but to Eat an Ape"

Regard that lion face: he is delirious, perhaps with fever. Behold the chomping muzzles of those apes. Notice those denunciatory disembodied hands. Remark on how the lone dangling ape appears to suffer from something best described as migratory hip-ass. Appreciate how I made the effort to include a subtle nod to a classic drawing of the past in the form of some groin-fangs, apey this time.

As for the sentiment expressed in the title, how I wish it were true--I wish it were true for humans, even. Then our scientists could engineer tiny apes that would delight either in being swallowed by colicky babies or in munching human flesh like so many twice-lipped leeches.

Mooruary!

Interviews and Criticism

Paris Review interview
Fantastic article by Dan Chiasson in The Believer
Marianne Moore at Find Articles
Article at Slate
Biography and criticism at Modern American Poetry

Poetry

Poems at Poemhunter
A few poems at RPO
Two poems

Coincidence: today is the 35th anniversary of her death. Richard Nixon made a statement, in which he alluded inappropriately to the kind of splashes she made. They were colorful and enchanting, apparently.

I Have No Idea What Grasshoppers Look Like, I Guess

Below, Richard saucily proposes that instead of celebrating Marianne Moore this month, we should celebrate Frederick Tuckerman, a "really bad 19th-c. American poet absurdly overrated by Yvor Winters." I take issue with this characterization! Any man who is the wellspring of such images as "the old grasshopper molasses-mouthed" deserves our respect as well as our cartoons, and so I set Marianne Moore aside for the moment and celebrate him today:

Sleep soundly, Frederick Tuckerman; I pray that sticky-lipped bugs are gnawing you.

So.

How do you feel about Marianne Moore--Ms. Mongoose Civique herself--for February? Nice, right? Who else could I choose, when her poems are so relentlessly animal-filled? She is after my own heart. It will be difficult, I think, but I'm up for the challenge, being as how I digesteth harde yron for breakfast and all.

CATSHADOW

Do we have time for one more example of my illuminative mastery before we declare the whompingly successful month of Ashbuary over and done with? Oh, I think so. Here's one for the ages:


Meanwhile there was one
Who all unseen came creeping at this scale of visions
Like the gigantic specter of a cat towering over tiny mice
About to adjourn the town meeting due to the shadow

from "The Pursuit of Happiness"

Finally, an illustration that needs no explanation whatsoever. You have your gigantic cat specter, your tiny mice with gavels, your wind-driven tongue rain. No need to thank me, I just thought I'd throw a bone to all the children who are reading, arriving here by search terms as various as "jokes about fingers," "animal breasts," "meow mix cake," and "two eyes joke." Little babies, I hope you enjoyed Ashbuary as much as I did. My most sincere thanks to the underwater Ana, the yet-elusive Moosiluake, and the obedient Elegant Choice for the rib-sticking submissions.

I'm considering several poets for February, but I'm having a difficult time settling on one. Maybe I'll open it up to a vote tomorrow.