H.D.-The Pool

In Hilda Doolittle’s The Pool, the narrator has found a creature in a tide pool that, to the narrator at least, was unknown to exist. The meat of this single stanza poem is derived of child like wonder and curiosity. The reader is able to almost remember this wonder, as they too curiously ponder on what this creature is that the youthful narrator is inspecting. Like all curious children, the narrator pokes the creature with a stick. Of course the only way to tell if you can agitate a creature is by poking it with a stick. Elated that the creature is both alive, and able to move the child captures the creature in a net, still quizzical as to what the creature is. There is no description of the creature other than referring to it as “bandied one” and referring to its agitated physical response to being poked as “quivering like a fish”.