On April 18, Carleton’s arts and humanities faculty members celebrated national “Poem in Your Pocket Day” by making select poems available for download on the Humanities Center website. One in particular caught our eye:
The Caterpillar
by Ogden Nash
I find among the poems of Schiller
No mention of the caterpillar.
Nor can I find one anywhere
In Petrarch or in Baudelaire,
So here I sit in extra session
To give my personal impression.
The caterpillar, as it’s called,
Is often hairy, seldom bald;
It looks as if it never shaves;
When as it walks, it walks in waves;
And from the cradle to the chrysalis
It’s utterly speechless, songless, whistleless.