Charles,

Frost's "Departmental" is one of the few *overtly* critical
poems he wrote about the New Deal.  And it is mild, comical
satire--not cutting, as in many of the others, like "Neither
Out Far Nor In Deep," on which I've published an essay (where
again, an animal image, the "gull," has double meaning).

As to Terrell's wasp cocoon, I might add that a casque, which
is a specifically military word for helmet, is not cocoon-shaped.
Perhaps Terrell confused the homonym "cask," a barrel, with the
cocoon idea.  Anyway, to suppress the military associations in
the passage--the ant/centaur, and the casque, and the "rathe to
destroy"--would amount, IMHO, to losing half of what Ez wanted to
suggest.

==Dan

At 09:01 PM 8/23/00 -0700, you wrote:
>Dan,
>    How about Frost's "ant" poem "DEpartmental"? It fits your theory rather
>well.
>
>Burt,
>    On Terrell's wasp cocoon, I think he is mistaken. Pound describes the
>emerging young wasp as green but not the casque of the cocoon. I take it
>those are Paper wasps or Mud Daubers. In either case their "casque"
>constructions are gray or brown not green.
>    I favor the Monarch butterfly as Pound's subject.  Go to-
>
>    http://adver-net.com/Monemerg.html
>(The wonders of the Net!)
>
>    The Monarch larva feeds on the milkweed plant. See Notes for Canto CXVII
>et seq.
>
>    "Milkweed  the sustenance
>         as to enter arcanum."
> "Arcanum" has hermetic and alchemical transmutational overtones as well as
>metaphoric.
>
>CDM
>
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