Bloodsucking Poets

I caught up on Radio 4's 'Suckers! Poet and Parasite' which made some interesting links between poets and poems which have taken parasites and bloodsuckers for their subject. Paul Farley cast an entertaining (mostquito) net over the haul, which touched on Ovid but looked in depth at Donne's 'The Flea' (that marvellous metaphysical seduction poem), Wordsworth's 'Resolution and Independence' (celebrating the Leech Gatherer in all his steadfastness and quiet strength) and the lice ridden world of Rimbaud and Verlaine (Verlaine used to keep lice about his person in oder to throw them at members of the clergy should the opportunity arise). An interesting query whether all this figurative use of bloodsucking led to the burgeoning of vampire mythologies. Then to Lawrence's marvellous Mosquito poem itself, and on to contemporaries Susan Wicks, whose poem to head lice is almost a love poem as her speaker discovers the hidden 'pearls' on her child's scalp, and Anthony Dunn who has an entire collection gathered under the title 'Bugs'.

Some discussion of whether the poet is like a parasite him or herself - or, rather, and more dignified, like the leech gatherer, seeking his curative harvest in patience and faith. How far is the poem itself like a parasite too I wonder - something nagging and irritating and biting at the skin of one's consciousness until it's squashed or swatted away or able to drink to its full:

Queer, how you stalk and prowl the air

In circles and evasions, enveloping me,

Ghoul on wings

Winged Victory.

Of course you may be the sort of person who is oblivious to the itching or whom the parasites are simply not attracted. Or perhaps your blood is particularly sweet to these inexplicable, almost microscopic creatures and they will come sometimes singly, sometimes in swarms, not willing to leave you alone.