tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post2405863899819157330..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: Marianne Moore: The PangolinUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-4490848522938743022015-05-11T08:35:26.025-07:002015-05-11T08:35:26.025-07:00Dear TC: It is so depressing & infuriating to ...Dear TC: It is so depressing & infuriating to see these wondrous creatures turned into a menu "delicacy" or an ingredient in "traditional medicine." Soon all there will be are rats, roaches, and us.tpwhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05909239000589253931noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-59256313533530776152015-05-09T15:08:43.942-07:002015-05-09T15:08:43.942-07:00You keep my eyes open, Tom, even though I want to ...You keep my eyes open, Tom, even though I want to close them. all the best to you, Donnadfleischerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15131508201970439938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-22019719223320072322015-05-09T14:44:38.403-07:002015-05-09T14:44:38.403-07:00The world overtaken is the newer nature; everythin...The world overtaken is the newer nature; everything is drawn inexorably into the stream of commerce, no longer pangolin, but product.Hazenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13417573435195561519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-88547336538781610952015-05-09T11:16:37.419-07:002015-05-09T11:16:37.419-07:00Police name a suspect in recent pangolin bust in M...Police name a suspect in recent pangolin bust in Medan: Mei Leandha, Ekuatorial Environment News, 5 May 2015:<br />__<br /><br />Medan, Ekuatorial – Police have arrested a suspect related to recent pangolin smuggling, said a senior investigator, in Medan, North Sumatra.<br /><br />In April, Indonesian National Police’s Criminal Investigation Division (Bareskrim) confiscated at least five tons of slaughtered pangolins (Manis javanica) in Medan, North Sumatra. The bust also managed to save 96 pangolins which will be released back to the forest.<br /><br />“We manage to declare SB as a suspect who admitted to be running this business for the past six months. Investigators are still collecting evidence. The suspect runs a very tight business, it is not going to be easy to reveal the network,” said deputy director of Specific Crime Unit at the Division Didit Wijanardi to reporters at the demolition of slaughtered pangolins, in Medan, North Sumatra, recently.<br /><br />Wijanardi said that pangolin [is] usually sold to other Asian countries, including Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and China for its scales and meat.<br /><br />“The bust in Medan is worth of Rp 18.4 billion (US$ 1,4 million). A very huge business. This is the second largest bust, the first was in Palembang,” he said citing the 2008 major bust of at least 13 tons of dead pangolins earning the city a reputation as the hub for illegal wildlife trading.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-77747250214848220082015-05-09T10:50:52.245-07:002015-05-09T10:50:52.245-07:00From Sister Bernetta Quinn, O.S.F.: The Artist as ...From Sister Bernetta Quinn, O.S.F.: The Artist as Armored Animal:<br /> __<br /><br /> Most of Marianne Moore's time at Bryn Mawr, according to an interview with Donald Hall, was spent in the biology laboratory; she tells him that she "found the biology courses -- minor, major, and histology -- exhilarating." She would have been well-acquainted with Linnaeus, who first classified the pangolin (1758) as Pholidota ("scaled animals"), its specific name derived from the Malayan word Guling, meaning a bolster or cylindrical cushion (sometimes the synonym roller is used, recalling the mammal's trick of escape). So important to her was this denizen of the African/Asian forests that the handsome 1936 collection of her verse arranged by H.D. and illustrated by Carlisle's George Plank not only took the animal as title but placed "The Pangolin" in the most prominent place, last. Renowned as [Moore] was for zoo-visiting, it is unlikely that she knew the pangolin any more directly than through books:<br /><br /> "The difficulty of feeding these animals in captivity makes them one of the greatest of rarities in zoological gardens.... So it is that everyone in the Western Hemisphere, to see them alive, must, like Mohammed, go to the less mobile object, in this case not the mountain, but the mantis."<br /><br /> So writes Robert T. Hatt in the article on pangolins which Miss Moore lists in her Notes, its reading a sign of her continued zest for biology.<br /><br /> *<br /><br /> ...the ear, highly developed... as it is in the pangolin, who can hear a sound five miles away. Marianne Moore['s]... skill in balancing rhyme, assonance, other sound-structure elements creates what [Randall] Jarrell lauds as "a texture that will withstand any amount of rereading; a restraint and delicacy that make many more powerful poems seem obvious." "The Pangolin" begins with three words involving the broad a (ah), "Another armored animal,"' followed by Moore's favorite punctuation mark, the dash; the triple repetition results in music as well as emphasis.<br /><br /> *<br /><br /> Scientist Theodore H. Eaton depicts the pangolin as shy, looking for food only at night, the "night miniature artist engineer" of Marianne Moore -- a factor which may well have saved it from extermination, since its tasty flesh is highly prized by natives of the regions where it dwells. Moore's comment on its food (which she defines as ants, excluding cockroaches) corresponds with Hatt's remark that although the mammal is "not above picking up an occasional beetle or even a worm, such digressions are not an indication of an omnivorous diet." Actually the pangolin is the world's only creature living on ants, the others (misnamed anteaters) preferring the less ferocious termites.<br /><br /> Using who instead of which, Marianne Moore subtly builds up (among other ways) her subject into a kind of human hero "who endures/exhausting solitary trips through unfamiliar ground at night." These nocturnal efforts appear poetic as exquisitely expressed by stepping "'peculiarly that the outside/ edges of his hands [not paws] may bear the weight and save/ the claws/ for digging." The gait is pictured thus by Hatt: "As most others of its group, the giant pangolin walks on its knuckles and the sides of its feet. Thus the claws are kept sharp for digging."<br /><br /> With her penchant for economical metaphor and precision, Miss Moore likens the mantis to a snake, through a participle: "Serpentined." Herbert Lang's photograph accompanying the Hatt essay bears out her impression: it shows the odd creature wrapped around the trunk reptile-like as it descends to the ground... The concise metaphor recording how the creature winds himself around a tree-trunk if endangered, in non-violent opposition to an aggressor, is indicative of how this poet can make sheets out of nettles.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-46535420754225439332015-05-09T08:12:56.314-07:002015-05-09T08:12:56.314-07:00"To explain grace requires / a curious hand.&..."To explain grace requires / a curious hand."<br /><br />http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/science/a-struggle-to-save-the-scaly-pangolin.htmlSTEPHEN RATCLIFFEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12339481653546188412noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-30744071418751044772015-05-09T07:40:56.146-07:002015-05-09T07:40:56.146-07:00The pangolin, that animal "with a splendor
.....The pangolin, that animal "with a splendor<br />.............which man in all his vileness cannot<br />...........set aside" is no match for rapacious man in all his greedy glory--but then again, which creature is?<br />vazambam (Vassilis Zambaras)https://www.blogger.com/profile/14515165428574974933noreply@blogger.com