Historian Gary Mormino led St. Petersburg poet Thomas Hallock to 'This Curious World: 1937'

Historian Gary Mormino leaves newspaper clippings in my mailbox at work. He does this for many people.

The flood of anecdotes, oddities, and leftover documentation is unrelenting. I've accumulated clippings from Mormino, mostly photocopied, for decades—clearly his plan to make the office of his colleagues as disheveled as his own notoriously cluttered desk.

Among the copies, I found three clippings from the year 1937: the report of a dead rattlesnake hung from a tree in Tarpon Springs; the transcription of a pleading letter from an African American woman named Viola Cosley to First Lady and social advocate Eleanor Roosevelt; and a syndicated cartoon panel, "This Curious World."

The 1930s saw both tremendous strides in conservation and violence to the human and natural world. What happens when we lay these three items on the same desk?

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This Curious World: 1937
By Thomas Hallock

When danger threatens, the parent
Grebe tucks its young under
its wing and dives.
Dear Mrs. Roosevelt,
I am a colored mother
and need your help.

Julius H. Smith, dairyman, walked
out of the courthouse with a check
for two dollars, the first bounty

My boy answered an advertisement for a job.
He was out of work and had myself and two
younger boys depending on him.

ever paid by the county on a rattlesnake.
The snake was hung in a tree back of the
clerk's office for public inspection.

They were sent to Clewiston, Fla.
and he cannot get away or write.
They are being guarded at night.

They are not allowed to write.
Won't you please help me get my boy home?
Viola Cosley. Birmingham, Ala.

Thomas Hallock teaches English on the St. Petersburg campus of the University of South Florida. He is the author, most recently, of “Happy Neighborhood: Essays and Poems.”

For National Poetry Month, Creative Loafing Tampa Bay asked  poets to write about trees—any trees—and they responded.

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