Mosquito Rage

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Mosquito Rage

• Pesty Insect Poems
• Jane Anderson JonesSeptember 2002

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Table of Contents

• 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 430 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

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Fig. 1. The parts of a mosquito. Freundenrich.
How Mosquitos Work. Marshall Brains How Stuff
Works. 20 Sept. 2002 com/mosquito.htm/printable
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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.
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from The Adironacs Hard fare, hard bed and comic
misery,The midge, the blue-fly and the
mosquitoPainted our necks, hands, ankles, with
red bandsBut, 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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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 arent 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
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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
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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
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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
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A
Mosquito Sings at
430 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 mosquitos song
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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
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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 natures
sacral aspect
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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 French cigarettes
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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
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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
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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
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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. (Benets 300-01).
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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 readingthat
has been brought to bear on Guston's work
(Balken). Selections of Musas poetry are
collected in Alone With the Moon (1994).
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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) Lawr
ence, D.H. (1885-1930) One of the major English
novelists of the Twentieth Century (novels
include Sons and Lovers, Women in Love, Lady
Chatterleys 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) (Benets).
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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 Into History
(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, The Kenyon 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).
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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)
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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.
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Bibliography
"About Stephen Morse." Stephen S. Morse. 8.
Mar.2002 . 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.mo
squito.html . Balken, Debra Bricker. Philip
Gustons Poem Pictures. Lingo A Journal of the
Arts. Cultureport Hard Press. 11 Sep. 2002
rs/balken.html . .
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Benets Readers 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. o.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. contributors.html
31
Craghead, W. Philip Gustons Poem Pictures.
USS Catastrophe. 23 Sept. 2002. http//www.usscatastrophe.com/cannon/guston/wc.gus
ton.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. 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-idxq1mosquitosid Freundenrich, Craig T.
How Mosquitos Work. Marshall Brains How Stuff
Works. 11 Sep. 2002 om/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
n/guston17.html Hardy, Myronn. "Mosquito."
Approaching the Center. 2001. Rpt. Poetry
Exhibits. Poets.Org. The Academy of American
Poets. 1997-2002. 8 Mar.2002.            
2112 . Jeanne Murray Walker Professor.
English Department, University of Delaware.
12 Mar. 2002. du/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 .
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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.
Morse, Stephen. "A Mosquito Sings at 430
A.M., Minnesota." Stephen S. Morse. 8.Mar.2002
.html . "Mosquito Anophales Quadrimaculatus"
Illinois Department of Natural Resources
Department of Education. 8 Mar. 2002
rm/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
rse/
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Stoneking, Billy Marshall. The Near Interview
of Richard Zola. dances of zola. 19 June
2001. 11. Sep. 2002 /pages/interview.php . Walker. Jeanne.
Mosquito. Jeanne Walker poet, playwright and
professor. 8 Aug. 1994 University of
Delaware Update Archives. 9 Mar. 2002.
Zola, Richard. "insect airlines - we never run
out of fuel." 2000. dances of zola. 9 Mar.
2002. poem83.html . _____. poetics. 2002. dances of
zola. 11 Sep. 2002. k/archive/index.html .
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Take a quiz to see how attractive you are to
mosquitoshttp//www.mosquitoes.com/meter.asp
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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
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This stupid world skinny mosquitos, skinny
fleas,skinny childrenIssa
http//www.thecie.org/issa/