Help me convince friends I didn't make this up?
September 24, 2010 10:09 PM   Subscribe

Poetry filter: help me find a poem I read in high school. It was titled "the Octopus" and it was filled with metaphors for sex and sexual organs.

My class had an awkward time with this poem during our so-called Poetry Unit, because part of our homework for every poem was to translate each line of the poem into plain English. "Uh, and then she put her hand around his, uh..."

More details: it was in an anthology of literature (not just poetry) but I couldn't tell you which publisher or what edition. This would have been 2005.

I've tried googling it but to no avail. Help from the hive?
posted by riddler to Writing & Language (4 answers total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
The Octopus by James Merrill?
posted by amyms at 10:23 PM on September 24, 2010 [1 favorite]


Have you perhaps conflated A. C. Hilton's aquarium-inspired Octopus with the work it parodies (namely Swinburne's libidinous Dolores)? Hilton replaces Swinburne's Lady of Pain with a mollusc.
posted by RichardP at 10:51 PM on September 24, 2010


Could be Marianne Moore's An Octopus.
posted by zoomorphic at 6:22 AM on September 25, 2010


RichardP's got it.

Octopus by Arthur Clement Hilton

Strange beauty, eight-limbed and eight-handed,
Whence camest to dazzle our eyes?
With thy bosom bespangled and banded
With the hues of the seas and the skies;
Is thy home European or Asian,
O mystical monster marine?
Part molluscous and partly crustacean,
Betwixt and between.

Wast thou born to the sound of sea trumpets?
Hast thou eaten and drunk to excess
Of the sponges -- thy muffins and crumpets,
Of the seaweed -- thy mustard and cress?
Wast thou nurtured in caverns of coral,
Remote from reproof or restraint?
Art thou innocent, art thou immoral,
Sinburnian or Saint?

Lithe limbs, curling free, as a creeper
That creeps in a desolate place,
To enroll and envelop the sleeper
In a silent and stealthy embrace,
Cruel beak craning forward to bite us,
Our juices to drain and to drink,
Or to whelm us in waves of Cocytus,
Indelible ink!

O breast, that 'twere rapture to writhe on!
O arms 'twere delicious to feel
Clinging close with the crush of the Python,
When she maketh her murderous meal!
In thy eight-fold embraces enfolden,
Let our empty existence escape,
Give us death that is glorious and golden,
Crushed all out of shape!

Ah! thy red lips, lascivious and luscious,
With death in their amorous kiss,
Cling round us, and clasp us, and crush us,
With bitings of agonised bliss;
We are sick with the poison of pleasure,
Dispense us the potion of pain;
Ope thy mouth to its uttermost measure
And bite us again!
posted by LobsterMitten at 2:16 PM on September 25, 2010


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