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Marsden Hartley’s “Salutations to a Mouse” · The Daily Poem

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  [music]
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  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Friday, September 18th, 2026.
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  SPEAKER_00: Today's poem is by Marsden Hartley.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's called Salutations to a Mouse.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'll read it once, offer a few comments, and read it one more time.
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  SPEAKER_00: Salutations to a Mouse If a mouse makes a nest of one's written words,
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  SPEAKER_00: is there else to do but accept the flattery?
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  SPEAKER_00: I have deemed it wise to do so.
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  SPEAKER_00: I have thanked him sufficiently as he scurried in and out of the room.
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  SPEAKER_00: He has faced wither with a nest of my words.
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  SPEAKER_00: I did not suspect them of such worth against the cold.
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  SPEAKER_00: The self-deprecating poem is probably its own sub-genre of poetry, maybe a sub-sub-genre.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's the Ars Poetica,
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  SPEAKER_00: there's the poem that speaks about the creative process,
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  SPEAKER_00: the poetic voice that is self-aware of this fact that it is writing a poem for you
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  SPEAKER_00: to read or hear.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe this kind of poem fits under that broader umbrella.
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  SPEAKER_00: This poem is self-aware, but it's also not too self-satisfied.
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  SPEAKER_00: There is a real human moment here when one comes back to find
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  SPEAKER_00: that their manuscript has been chewed up and carried off by a mouse,
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  SPEAKER_00: and then the simple acknowledgement that perhaps the mouse has put the poem
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  SPEAKER_00: to better use than others would have, than perhaps the poet himself would have.
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  SPEAKER_00: This poem, too, reflects that humble acknowledgement.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is slim on the page.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's There's a lot of white space,
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  SPEAKER_00: only a few words per line, no complicated metaphors, it's unadorned.
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  SPEAKER_00: You can imagine the hypothetical poem that the mouse carried off or chewed up,
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  SPEAKER_00: perhaps it was lengthy, elaborate.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe this has always been the speaker's style of verse,
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  SPEAKER_00: but I choose to read it here as representing the new learned humility
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  SPEAKER_00: after this encounter with the mouse.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's not to say there's no consolation here for the speaker.
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  SPEAKER_00: Whatever poets might dream of when they set out to write a poem or set out to be
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  SPEAKER_00: a poet,
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  SPEAKER_00: the discovery that your poetry has kept another living creature warm
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  SPEAKER_00: at night is no small thing.
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  SPEAKER_00: Here's the poem one more time.
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  SPEAKER_00: If a mouse makes a nest of one's written words, is there else to do but accept the flattery?
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: I have deemed it wise to do so.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: I have thanked him sufficiently as he scurried in and out of the room.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: He has faced wither with a nest of my words.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: I did not suspect them of such worth against the cold.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: This has been The Daily Poem.
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  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.
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  SPEAKER_00: We'll be back next week with more poetry for you.
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  SPEAKER_00: Until then,
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  SPEAKER_00: find us at dailypoempod.substack.com,
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: where you can spend all weekend listening to past episodes of The Daily Poem.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the best thing about recorded poems is their mouse proof.
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  SPEAKER_00: For all of us at Goldberry Studios, I'm Sean Johnson wishing you happy reading.