Pig Poetry: Stan Rice

Stan Rice

The Offering

To the somethingness
Which prevents the nothingness
Like Homer’s wild boar
From thrashing this way and that
It’s white tusks
Through human beings
Like crackling stalks
And to nothing less
I offer this suffering of my father.
16 October ’93

this poem is quoted in: Anne Rice’s Memnoch the Devil. New York: Knopf Publishing Group, 1995.

I Ride the Flying Pig

I ride the flying pig!
His ears stick up with excitement!
His eyes look out at the galaxy!
He does not see me!
He has two fangs that come up over his lips!
He does not feel the brass pole in his back!
He wears a purple saddle!
I ride him through the mirrors!
The flying pig does not feel me!
I am as light as his saddle!
He has no reins!
The sunlight falls on the white benches!
The pig flies over the gleaming benches!
The brown eyes never change!
He is the flying pig with courage!
No rider can alter his cruel expression!
His little hooves stick out in front and in back!
He glides over the wood!
No one is as beautiful as my flying pig!
Not even the flying lion and the flying jackrabbit behind us!

Whiteboy. Berkeley: Mudra Press, 1976.

Editor’s Note:

Some of Stan Rice’s paintings, including ‘The Flying Pig’ are available for viewing at the Porkopolis Art Museum.

More information on Stan Rice is available at: stanrice.com.

About the Pig Poet

Stan Rice (1942 – 2002), US poet and painter. Stan Rice is the author of eight collections of poetry, including False Prophet, Red to the Rind and The Radiance of Pigs. For many years he was associated with San Francisco State University, where he was Professor of English and Creative Writing, Assistant Director of the Poetry Center, and Chairman of the Creative Writing Department.

Rice was the recipient of the Edgar Allen Poe Award of the Academy of American Poets, the Joseph Henry Jackson Award, and a writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

On December 9, Stan Rice died of cancer at age 60 in New Orleans where he lived with his wife, the novelist Anne Rice, and their son, the novelist Christopher Rice. [DES–6/03]