To Think of Caves Where Great Whales Breed - a book of poetry By Lynn Veach Sadler

Jan. 30, 2012 - PRLog -- She gets them in her poetry, immortalizing them with her mastery of word, stanza and composition. Dr. Sadler turns, for the thickness of one book of poetry, into an animals’ master, transporting us into a world we knew yet never really paid full attention to - “their” world, what “they” mean to us. Most probably, many of us do need our eyes opened.

Foreword

As I hope these poems convey, animals fill me with wonder and awe. How can we think upon “caves where great whales breed” and not marvel and turn contemplative? We see animals daily, but do we truly see them? What has happened to the world when a monkey no longer cuts its “shines” (“When Oil and Water Mix”)? I have always thought, probably only because I wanted to, that I had a special connection with the creatures. Still, I herewith attest that the experience of the first poem, “The Leopard Is Spotted,” is true.

Yes, animals fill me with awe. My shock derives from how we treat them (and each other, as in “The Warrior Girl Hul Finds Love”). I don’t have to anthropomorphize, and I know about Darwinian tooth/fang and claw [“Mortar for Pestle,” “The Silver (and Red) Ball”],but I grew up with baby squirrels brought to me as pets by logging crews. I’m told that a current neighbor captures them in cages, which he sinks in the lake until they drown. But when we had Rotary guests from Australia recently, and I was sidelined with a broken ankle, my husband Emory took them to Fayetteville [NC] to see the Arsenal grounds, Ghost Tower, and Market House and to the Averasboro Battlefield. They admitted to being most fascinated with the squirrels, which are lacking “Down Under,” and kept watching and trying to get pictures of those that play around our house and sit on my office’s window ledges.

Animals bring me delight and make me laugh. On the far larger level, cultures credit them with creating and saving their worlds. They continue to feed and, to a limited extent, clothe us. They bring comfort and connection. We can hardly talk without using them as metaphors (“A Non-Poster Child Speaks of SWAN THINGS from the Methodist Orphanage”) as we “carp,” “grouse,” go “crabbing in,” and describe ourselves (others, of course) in animal terms (ape, snail, sloth, slug). I like to think of Nanook imitating the walrus with “Iviuk! Iviuk!” (“Laughter at the Top of the World”). Poets invoke variations on the winged steed Pegasus for inspiration. Think of Aesop, Kenneth Graham, the Grimm Brothers, Joel Chandler Harris, Rudyard Kipling,

Jack London, A. A. Milne, Charles Perrault, Beatrix Potter, Dr. Seuss, Anna Sewell . . . . (And now Michael Morpurgo will be known through the movie War Horse.) As children, all of us knew versions of Mother Goose. As adults, all of us dream versions of the phoenix rising as we try to overcome failures and tragedies.

By the way, I’ve recently been reading Aesop (in the translation of V. S. Vernon Jones and with the wonderful illustrations of Arthur Rackham). The fables are amazingly different from what I’d taken in orally over the years! I particularly recommend your reading “The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing.”

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