[New-Poetry] Toads

[Bob Marcacci]

DEATH OF A NATURALIST
by Seamus Heaney

All year the flax-dam festered in the heart
of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring
I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied
Specks to range on window-sills at home,
On shelves at school, and wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst into nimble-
Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how
The daddy frog was called a bullfrog
And how he croaked and how the mammy frog
Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was
Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too
For they were yellow in the sun and brown
In rain.

Then one hot day when fields were rank
With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.
Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:
The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.

-- 
Bob Marcacci

Take time to come home to yourself everyday.
 - Robin Casarjean
 


> From: Skip Fox <skip at louisiana.edu>
> Reply-To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views"
> <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
> Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2007 15:15:47 -0500
> To: "'NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views'"
> <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
> Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Toads
> 
> I love this, using the talkative toad in _The Wind and the Willows_, as the
> genesis  for the phrase. This does not preclude the possibility that she was
> gently deflating Yeats' sense of grandeur, which would be in keeping with
> her more restrained views of the poet's mission and abilities.
> 
>  
> 
> Well . . .  
> 
>  
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> [mailto:new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu] On Behalf Of David Graham
> Sent: Monday, July 02, 2007 2:30 PM
> To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views
> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Toads
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> On Jul 2, 2007, at 3:16 PM, Bob Grumman wrote:
> 
> I'm skeptical.  The phrase "literalists of the imagination" Moore ascribes
> to Yeats, but not the toads.  She was typically very scrupulous about
> acknowledging her borrowings.
> 
>  
> 
> The Yeats is from *Ideas of Good and Evil*:  "The limitation of his view was
> from the very intensity of his vision; he was a too literal realist of
> imagination, as others are of nature...."  He's discussing Blake's
> illustrations of Dante.
> 
>  
> 
> I could easily be wrong, but note that Moore puts the toads passage in
> quotes.
> 
>  
> 
> --Bob G.
> 
> ================================
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>> From Representative Poetry Online:
> 
>  
> 
> imaginary gardens with real toads in them: in some editions, Moore places
> quotation marks around these words, but their source is unknown. Possibly
> Moore had in mind "the garden front of Toad Hall" in Kenneth Grahame's The
> Wind in the Willows (New York: C. Scribner's sons, 1907; 1913 copy at del F
> Fisher Rare Book Library), a children's book with real poems in it. Cf.
> Grahame's account of Toad of Toad Hall: "During luncheon -- which was
> excellent, of course, as everything at Toad Hall always was -- the Toad
> simply let himself go. Disregarding the Rat, he proceeded to play upon the
> inexperienced Mole as on a harp. Naturally a voluble animal, and always
> mastered by his imagination, he painted the prospects of the trip and the
> joys of the open life and the roadside in such glowing colours that the Mole
> could hardly sit in his chair for excitement"
> 
> http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1488.html
> 
> -----------
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> ========================================
> 
> David Graham
> 
> grahamd at ripon.edu
> 
>  
> 
> Home Page:
> 
> http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/About%20Me.html
> 
>  
> 
> Poetry Library:
> 
> http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/DGPoLibrary.html
> 
> ==========================================
> 
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