Sleeping Puppy and Hedgehog: Rembrandt and Dürer

← v17n1, Spring 2018

According to my latest research

which is plenty good for now

these Old Masters worked counter

to the Counter-Reformation,

worked for the Scientific Revolution

when they etched dogs, the urns

of fig flowers, and New World birds

perched on dinosaur feet. Another

kind of inquisition is to look closely,

to attend, to see with the kind of love

that sails forth when your eyes open

to draw the other in, so all these years later

we can feel how this hedgehog trembled

up to its eyes and how this curled puppy

is learning what it means to trust.

art animals

Michelle Boisseau

Michelle Boisseau (1955–2017) was the author of six collections of poetry including Among the Gorgons (University of Tampa Press, 2016). She received a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 2017 and her second National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 2010. Her textbook, Writing Poems (Longman, 2004), is in its eighth edition. She was a professor of English at the University of Missouri–Kansas City until her death from lung cancer last fall. We will miss her distinct voice.