On Hedgehogs And Poetry (à la Wallace Stevens)

I was driving along a country road this morning when the smallest hedgehog ever crossed my path. It was such an unexpected surprise that I pulled over not only in order to enjoy the wildlife epiphany but because the event reminded me of a quote by Wallace Stevens: "Poetry is a pheasant disappearing in the brush". Well, maybe poetry is a hedgehog  disappearing in the darkest greenery. I want to write a haiku in honor of my small, lovely fellow!  And let him reappear in my pen!


Comments

  1. C. Margery KempeMarch 27, 2011 at 4:12 PM

    How wonderful! Hedgehogs are adorable. I dream of having a garden where hedgehogs abound and my gnome can at last have a home, but I suspect it will only ever exist in my mind.

    ReplyDelete
  2. John Claude SmithMarch 27, 2011 at 7:49 PM

    Another wonderful blog and I can tell by the twitter update to the right that you have written the haiku as well.
    I must confess, though, I will always associate hedgehogs with Kathe Koja's novel, "Skin," as one of the main characters is referred to via that description...no matter how adorable they may be in real life. ;-)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Visceral Anne Sexton

Image
I love visceral poets. I love poetry made of flesh and bones, of marrow and heart. And pain. I was seventeen when I first read a poem by Anne Sexton. It was love at first sight. I could not help reading all she wrote from then onward and being so devastated by her words and life. I still retain the magical power with which a sentence of that poem hit me: "My mouth blooms like a cut." If only my verses could be as powerful as this! Anne remains a spirit guide.
Read more

Wearing Poetry

Image
Yes, I proudly wear poetry. Every time I watch my ring I rejoice because those lines were written for me and no one else owns a more precious jewel. It is not the silver that makes it precious, but the beauty of the words that were chiseled on it. More so, it is the meaning of those six lines--that are the final stanza of a longer poem--that move me and remind me how incredible fortunate I am. Nothing like those words. They burn in me like an inextinguishable fire every day.  
Read more

Recalling Pier Paolo Pasolini: A Force of the Past

Image
Today is Pasolini's 36th death anniversary. He was brutally killed on the night of November 2, 1975 in still unclear circumstances and found the following morning by a blue collar on his way to work. Pasolini is possibly Italy's most important poet after Dante. An amazing intellectual who truly loved the lowest classes, which he celebrated in his deeply profound novels and poems. As Jack Hirschman points out, his three initials stand for "Passion, Provocation and Prophecy." This is so true.  I wish to celebrate Pasolini posting Orson Welles' reading one of his poems of which I am also including a translation. "I am a Force of the Past" roars Pasolini. No, he is much more than that. He is still today a Force of the Present and of the Future too.  I am a Force of the Past. My love lies only in tradition. I come from the ruins, the churches, the altarpieces, the villages abandoned in the Appenines or foothills of the Alps where my brothers once l...
Read more