Mosquito Rage

1. Mosquito Rage Pesty Insect Poems Jane Anderson JonesSeptember 2002

2. Introduction 3 Poems from “The Adironacs” by Ralph Waldo Emerson 4 “The Mosquito” by D.H. Lawrence 5 “Veto” by Don Blanding 10 “Awakened by a Mosquito in the Villa Aurelia” by Philip Guston 11 and Musa McKim “Mosquito” by Lorna Whitelaw/Anderson 12 “Mosquitos” by David Chorlton 13 “A Mosquito Sings at 4:30 A.M., Minnesota” by Stephen Morse 15 “Mosquito” by Jeanne Murray Walker 16 “Mosquito Poem” by Nancy Botkin 17 “insect airlines - we never run out of fuel” by Richard Zola 18 “Mosquito” by Myronn Hardy 19 Poets 21 Mosquito Evasion 27 Bibliography 28 Table of Contents

3. Fig. 1. The parts of a mosquito. Freundenrich. “How Mosquitos Work.” Marshall Brain’s How Stuff Works. 20 Sept. 2002< http://www.howstuffworks.com/mosquito.htm/printable >

4. Introduction The Introduction should discuss how the theme of the anthology is revealed in the selections. The editor may decide to compare and contrast some poems, point out different techniques used by the poets to address the theme, and/or discuss cultural differences among the poets, among other possible topics. Biography of the poets should NOT be discussed in the Introduction. This is a critical, analytical introduction, hence there should be no use of 1st (I, we) or 2nd (you) person.  If you use critical sources for information, they must be documented according to MLA Guidelines. Discuss the poetry, not why you chose it. 750-1000 words.

5. from The Adironacs Hard fare, hard bed and comic misery,­The midge, the blue-fly and the mosquitoPainted our necks, hands, ankles, with red bands:But, on the second day, we heed them not,Nays we saluted them Auxiliaries,Whom earlier we had chid with spiteful names.For who defends our leafy tabernacleFrom bold intrusion of the travelling crowd,­Who but the midge, mosquito and the fly,Which past endurance sting the tender cit,But which we learn to scatter with a smudge,Or baffle by a veil, or slight by scorn? Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1858 In the introduction to The Adironacs, Emerson gives the occasion for the poem: “In August, 1858, Mr. William J. Stillman, an artist by profession, but a man almost of the versatility in accomplishment of The Admirable Crichton, as painter, writer, critic, foreign consul (in which service he showed himself a chivalrous Philhellene), and last, not least, an accomplished woodsman and hunter, led a party of his friends into the then primæval forest of the Adirondac Mountains. The party were, Stillman, Agassiz, Lowell, Judge Hoar, Dr. Jeffries Wyman, the comparative anatomist; Samuel G. Ward, a near friend of Mr. Emerson's; Dr. Estes Howe, John Holmes (brother of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes), Horatio Woodman, Dr. Amos Binney, and Emerson.” (Notes) Sources of information must be cited in parenthetical citations

6. Mosquito When did you start your tricks Monsieur? What do you stand on such high legs for? Why this length of shredded shank You exaltation? Is it so that you shall lift your centre of gravity upwards And weigh no more than air as you alight upon me, Stand upon me weightless, you phantom? I heard a woman call you the Winged Victory In sluggish Venice. You turn your head towards your tail, and smile. How can you put so much devilry Into that translucent phantom shred Of a frail corpus? Winged Victory: The Winged Victory of Samothrace, a statue of Nike, the Greek Goddess of Victory, is found in the Louvre Museum in Paris.

7. Queer, with your thin wings and your streaming legs How you sail like a heron, or a dull clot of air, A nothingness. Yet what an aura surrounds you; Your evil little aura, prowling, and casting a numbness on my mind. That is your trick, your bit of filthy magic: Invisibility, and the anæsthetic power To deaden my attention in your direction. But I know your game now, streaky sorcerer. Queer, how you stalk and prowl the air In circles and evasions, enveloping me, Ghoul on wings Winged Victory. Settle, and stand on long thin shanks Eyeing me sideways, and cunningly conscious that I am aware, You speck. The conceit of the mosquito as sorcerer runs throughout much of the poem.

8. I hate the way you lurch off sideways into air Having read my thoughts against you. Come then, let us play at unawares, And see who wins in this sly game of bluff. Man or mosquito. You don't know that I exist, and I don't know that you exist. Now then! It is your trump It is your hateful little trump You pointed fiend, Which shakes my sudden blood to hatred of you: It is your small, high, hateful bugle in my ear. Why do you do it? Surely it is bad policy. They say you can't help it.

9. If that is so, then I believe a little in Providence protecting the innocent. But it sounds so amazingly like a slogan A yell of triumph as you snatch my scalp. Blood, red blood Super-magical Forbidden liquor. I behold you stand For a second enspasmed in oblivion, Obscenely ecstasied Sucking live blood My blood. Such silence, such suspended transport, Such gorging, Such obscenity of trespass.

10. You stagger As well as you may. Only your accursed hairy frailty Your own imponderable weightlessness Saves you, wafts you away on the very draught my anger makes in its snatching. Away with a pæan of derision You winged blood-drop. Can I not overtake you? Are you one too many for me Winged Victory? Am I not mosquito enough to out-mosquito you? Queer, what a big stain my sucked blood makes Beside the infinitesimal faint smear of you! Queer, what a dim dark smudge you have disappeared into! Siracusa. D. H. Lawrence, 1920 pæan: a joyful song

11. Veto There's a law of nature I'd like to veto... It's the life and love of the (blank) mosquito. Don Blanding, 1955

12. Philip Guston and Musa Mckim, 1970s Toward the end of his life, abstract artist Philip Guston, turned his attention from the art world to the literary world and began to “tangle and mingle” his drawings with poems by various poets, including his wife, Musa McKim. “His drawings for these poems aren’t illustrative, either realistically or Metaphorically. The pictures are a response, an addition to the argument, another light pointed at the same spot.” (Craghead) Sources of information must be cited in parenthetical citations

13. Mosquito Delicate creature of gossamer wing sashaying by: I hear you sing. Can you not see the hovering threat focussing palm, your life it will get? Now you are daintily poised on my book. Fairy-like sylph, you tempt me, but look- yes, for your beauty I'd fain let you fly, but for that bloodthirsty look in your eye- that murderous, bloodthirsty look in your eye! Lorna Whitelaw/Anderson, 1974

14. Mosquitos With his radio tuned to newsa listener alone in the early hoursgazes at a cometthrough his window.The feeling drainsfrom his feet. He pours a bowl of hot waterand takes off his socks.War has broken out in a countryhe cannot place. Aspirin is helplessagainst his headache. He wants explosivesto break the dambehind his eyes. The presidentis crushing grammar between his teethand the listener cries outfor a flood

15. to wash away the concretethat blocks his senses,a cleansing floodthat rushes down from the mountainsscented with pines. He looks outat the stars, but cannot hearthe mockingbirds. Financial marketsare falling in a trail of light.The sky sparkles. He just sitsand is numbto the bite of mosquitoeswho go back into the nighteach with a drop of his bloodglowing inside them.David Chorlton 2002

16. A Mosquito Sings at 4:30 A.M., Minnesota I,I,I,I,I,I,I . . . I wing my way With precision to animal heat. The viscuous, warm Mammalian liquid draws my Probe. The penetration is the ultimate Moment. I gorge, I feed, I Am at greatest risk. I am Legend. My spirit will live in the Great moisture land of the Forever warm. There has Been no other greater. I am A feeder. I live in the land Of the giant mammals. I Survive. I,I,I,I,I,I,I (the sound of a hand slapping) Stephen Morse, 1980s The onomatopoetic repetition of “I,I,I,I,I,I,I” at the beginning and end of the poem, not only recreates the whine of the mosquito, but emphasizes the first person voice of the mosquito’s song

17. Mosquito Six hours for everything! She has to make some choices. I would do what she does-fly up from the cool waterlike a dust mote, dry my wings, hoping they might lift me further. I would jazz it up, all for love, draw circles on the air. In this brief, expanding universe of suns, I would try to be nothing but longing, entirely hunger. And when I died, I'd leave behind a memory like an itch. Jeanne Murray Walker, 1994

18. The lack of punctuation in the ten-line long first sentence creates a rush of words interrupted only by the stanza breaks. The second sentence, nearly as long, seems more deliberate as its phrases are set off by commas. Ending the six tercets of the poem with a single-line stanza serves to emphasize nature’s sacral aspect

19. insect airlines - we never run out of fuel if over coffee in a parisian cafe a mosquito elegantly holding a gitane said: saddle me up and we'll fly through the jungles of madagascar and across the burning plains of africa i'd go but i'd worry all the time that i was being exploited and was nothing more than a gullible fuel tank Richard Zola, 2000 Gitane: a brand of Frenchcigarettes

20. Mosquito She visits me when the lights are out, when the sun is loving another part of the world. She passes through the net I sleep under like a cloud its holes are easily navigable. Her buzzing tells me that she doesn't want my legs arms cheeks or chest. No. She craves adventure wanting to travel through the dark canal the spiraling cave where earthquakes are wind. Note how the poet uses interior space

21. Her prize is in sight the gelatinous mass controlling this machine. How beautiful she thinks it is her needle mouthfilling with water. Her children will know physics geometry will understand English Spanish perhaps Portuguese. They will be haunted their whole lives by trees gunsand a boom that won't cease. She cries before drinking the fluid is salty-sweet. Oh if my mother had done this for me I would have lived. Myronn Hardy, 2001

22. Poets Anderson, Lorna (1918-2001) Canadian. Mother of Susannah, who created a website that contains her poetry. Blanding, Don (1894-1957). Born in Oklahoma, Blanding studied at the Art Institute in Chicago and in Paris and London. An itinerant artist and writer, his light verse met with popular success, and his first collection, published in 1928 under the title, Vagabond's House. met with immediate success. “After 1928 he wrote both poetry and prose, and his published works, some of them with his own illustrations, were: Virgin of Waikiki (1929), Hula Moons'(1930), Songs of the Seven Senses and Stowaways in Paradise (1931), Floridays (1940), Pilot Bails Out'(1943), Today Is Here (1946), Mostly California'(1948), A Grand Time for Living (1950), Joy Is an Inside Job'(1953), and Hawaii Says Aloha (1955) ” (“Don Blanding”). Sources of information must be cited in parenthetical citations

23. Botkin, Nancy (?): Botkin is a Lecturer in English at Indiana University: South Bend (Botkin) David Chorlton (?): lived in England and Austria before moving to Phoenix in 1978. His volumes of poetry include Forget the Country You Came From, Outposts, and a chapbook, Common Sightings which won the Palanquin Press Competition. He is a painter as well as a poet (Contributors). Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882): Poet, essayist and philosopher, Emerson was one of the towering figures of nineteenth-century American literature. Known as “the sage of Concord,” he was the chief spokesman for the Transcendentalists. (Benet’s 300-01).

24. Guston, Philip (1913-80)and Musa McKim (1908-92): Guston's Poem-Pictures were assembled in an exhibition at the Addison Gallery of American Art in 1994. “The Poem-Pictures incorporate passages, lines and, in some cases complete stanzas from poems by Berkson, Coolidge, Corbett, Musa McKim (Guston's wife), Stanley Kunitz (an old friend from the 1950s), among others ….and represent a form of collaboration that counter the ongoing modernist reading…that has been brought to bear on Guston's work” (Balken). Selections of Musa’s poetry are collected in Alone With the Moon (1994).

25. Hardy, Myronn (1972-): Hardy, born in Michigan, currently lives in New York City, where he earned an MFA degree in fiction at Columbia University's School of Arts in Writing. In 1998 he spent a year in South Africa transcribing apartheid and post-apartheid narratives and has presented his research at the University of Havana and the University of Guantanamo. His poems have been published in Third Coast, Many Mountains Moving, The Black Scholar, Callaloo, and in the anthology Testimony from Beacon Press (“Approaching”) Lawrence, D.H. (1885-1930): One of the major English novelists of the Twentieth Century (novels include Sons and Lovers, Women in Love, Lady Chatterley’s Lover), Lawrence also wrote short stories, poetry and essays. His poetry collections include Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923), Look! We Have Come Through (1917) and Pansies (1929) (Benet’s).

26. Morse, Stephen (1945-): Morse was born in Oakland Naval Hospital, Oakland, CA. As a teenager during the early 1960s, he hung out with the Beat poets at Coffee and Confusion in North Beach . He studied with Robert Creeley at San Francisco State University during the 1970s. His poetry has been published in Saturday Review, numerous small magazines, and in his 1972 book, Dusty Rabbits (“About Stephen Morse”). Walker, Jeanne Murray (?) Walker is the author of five books of poetry. They are Gaining Time (Copper Beech, l998), Stranger Than Fiction (Quarterly Review of Literature, l992), Coming IntoHistory (Cleveland State, l990), Fugitive Angels (Dragon Gate, l985), and Nailing Up The Home Sweet Home (Cleveland State, l980). Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The American Poetry Review, The Georgia Review, TheKenyon Review, The Nation, and many other journals and anthologies. A professor of poetry and drama at the University of Delaware, she also writes for the theatre (“Jeanne Murray Walker”).

27. Zola, Richard (1949-): Zola is an English poet who publishes his Poetry on his website dances with zola (Stoneking). Born on the Isle of Guernsey, he says “i write because i have a tribal mentality.....and no campfire” (Zola, “poetics”)

28. Mosquito Evasion: Personal Reflections on Pests and Poetry The editor's Concluding Reflections should be a personal statement about the Anthology. Here may discuss why you chose the poems. 250-500 words.

29. "About Stephen Morse." Stephen S. Morse. 8. Mar.2002 < http://www.juice-press.com >. Anderson, Lorna. “Mosquito.” 1974. Poems by Lorna Anderson. Jan. 2005 < http://mypage.direct.ca/s/susannah/mombugs.html >. "Approaching the Center by Myronn Hardy." Book Review. New Issues in Poetry and Prose. Spring 2001. Western Michigan University. 8 Mar. 2002 < http://www.wmich.edu/newissues/spring2001/hardy.mosquito.html >. Balken, Debra Bricker. “Philip Guston’s Poem Pictures.” Lingo: A Journal of the Arts. Cultureport: Hard Press. 11 Sep. 2002 < http://www.cultureport.com/newhp/lingo/authors/balken.html >. . Bibliography

30. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia. 3rd ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1987. Blanding, Don. "Veto." 1955. Florida in Poetry: A History of the Imagination. Eds. Jane Anderson Jones and Maurice O'Sullivan. Sarasota, FL: Pineapple Press, 1995. 261. Botkin, Nancy. “Mosquito Poem.” Poems of Life, 1999. Rpt. Home Pages Indiana University. 9 Mar. 2002. <http://www.iuinfo.indiana.edu/homepages/4-14-2000/text/botkin.htm>. Chorlton, David. “Mosquitos.” Slipstream 22 (2002). Online sample. 10 Sept. 2002. < http://www.slipstreampress.org/issue22.html > “Contributors.” The Ascent Experience: Aspirations for Artists. August 2002. 23 Sept. 2002. < http://www.bcsupernet.com/users/ascent/contributors.html >

31. Craghead, W. “Philip Guston’s ‘Poem Pictures.’” USS Catastrophe. 23 Sept. 2002. < http://www.usscatastrophe.com/cannon/guston/wc.guston.html > "Don Blanding." The National Cyclopedia of American Biography. New York: James T. White and Company, 1963. Vol. 46: 146-147. Rpt. Don Blanding. 2002. 8 Mar. 2002. < http://www.don-blanding.com/index.htm >. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Adirondacs.” Works: Poems Vol. 9. 1903. The American Verse Project. University of Michigan. 9 Mar. 2002 http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idxq1=mosquito&sid Freundenrich, Craig T. “How Mosquitos Work.” Marshall Brain’s How Stuff Works. 11 Sep. 2002 < http://www.howstuffworks.com/mosquito.htm/printable >

32. Guston, Philip and Musa McKim. "Awakened by a Mosquito in the Villa Aurelia" from Poem Pictures, 1970s. UbuWeb Historical. 9 Mar. 2002 < http://www.ubu.com/historical/guston/guston17.html > Hardy, Myronn. "Mosquito." Approaching the Center. 2001. Rpt. Poetry Exhibits. Poets.Org. The Academy of American Poets. 1997-2002. 8 Mar.2002. < http://www.poets.org/poems/poems.cfm?prmID=2112 >. “Jeanne Murray Walker” Professor.: English Department, University of Delaware. 12 Mar. 2002. < http://www.english.udel.edu/faculty/walker.html >. Lawrence, David Herbert. "Mosquito." 1921. Representative Poetry Online. University of Toronto Department of English and U of Toronto P, 1994-2000. 8. Mar. 2002. < http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/dhl10.html >.

33. Moncure, Sue Swyers. “UpDate - Vol. 13, No. 39, Page 5 August 4, 1994 Jeanne Walker: poet, playwright and professor” University of Delaware Update Archives. 9 Mar. 2002. <http://www.udel.edu/PR/UpDate/94/39/16.html > Morse, Stephen. "A Mosquito Sings at 4:30 A.M., Minnesota." Stephen S. Morse. 8.Mar.2002 < http://www.juice-press.com/poemorse/80s/mosquito.html >. "Mosquito: Anophales Quadrimaculatus" Illinois Department of Natural Resources: Department of Education. 8 Mar. 2002 <http://dnr.state.il.us/lands/education/classrm/wingleg/mosquito.HTM >. Notes. The Adironacs: A Journal. from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Works: Poems Vol. 9. 1903. The American Verse Project. University of Michigan. 9 Mar. 2002 < http://www.hti.umich.edu/a/amverse/ >

34. Stoneking, Billy Marshall. “ The Near Interview of Richard Zola.” dances of zola. 19 June 2001. 11. Sep. 2002 < http://www.richardzola.co.uk/pages/interview.php >. Walker. Jeanne. “Mosquito.” Jeanne Walker: poet, playwright and professor. 8 Aug. 1994 University of Delaware Update Archives. 9 Mar. 2002. <http://www.udel.edu/PR/UpDate/94/39/16.html > Zola, Richard. "insect airlines - we never run out of fuel." 2000. dances of zola. 9 Mar. 2002. < http://www.1freespace.com/art/danceofzola/poem83.html >. _____. “poetics.” 2002. dances of zola. 11 Sep. 2002. < http://www.richardzola.co.uk/archive/index.html >.

35. Take a quiz to see how attractive you are to mosquitos:http://www.mosquitoes.com/meter.asp

36. Post Script Mosquito Limerick A mosquito was heard to complain That a chemist had poisoned his brain The cause of his sorrow Was para-dichloro- diphenyltrichloroethane From the Seattle Food Garden Newsletter, put out by the Washington State University's Extension Service and King County