Dante's Heart
Long Night Howling Before Dawn:
A Letter From the Editors
At one time, the wolf was a dominant figure in Western folklore--back when
we couldn't sleep nights because of the howling in the forest outside the
village. The winters could be violently cold, and (at least according to our
great-great-great-great grandmothers) the wolves could be violently hungry.
Cole Swensen, in her book Such Rich Hour, remembers that folk
consciousness of the nearness and threat of wolves:
One year they even took to entering
the city by swimming up the Seine
because of course the portes were barred and one
year one attacked
a "woman with child" eating first
the unborn and that
seemed worse to them than the death
of the mother who I say died twice because
and forced to watch there are wolves
in the river as the river is freezing over
they are swimming up the freezing river in droves.
From our fear and our fascination, wolves have appeared in the foreground
and the background of our stories, our dreams, and our nightmares, even as
the wolves in Kathy Treadwell's painting, Full Moon Night, appear both as
a visible pack and as a palpable presence behind the trees of the forest.
(Of course, for all that supposed fear, some distant ancestor of ours
tamed a wolf and fed it meat from her hand to make that wolf a dog.)
But what do wolves mean to us now, here, in this hour, on this cold night?
Most of our readers have never seen or heard a wolf in the wild. In many
parts of the world they no longer exist. As George Moore's poem
"Extinctions" laments:
Gray wolf
to Arctic, Red wolf
to Mexico, barely disturbed
except by the mingling
of our extinctions.
In the interest of securing ranch country for cattle or other livestock, our
species has all but eliminated wolves. There is a rare beauty to M. Kathryn
Field's "The Story of the Wolf," in which Field, who works in Grand
Teton National Park, pushes us to relearn the wonder of hearing "the
howled stories of the wolf" present and alive in our ears:
There is no word to define his life,
No measure
To his lonely cry,
To the smell of his coat
Caked with deer and elk and
Moose droppings,
To the searching howl for a mate.
Page 2
A Letter From the Editors
At one time, the wolf was a dominant figure in Western folklore--back when
we couldn't sleep nights because of the howling in the forest outside the
village. The winters could be violently cold, and (at least according to our
great-great-great-great grandmothers) the wolves could be violently hungry.
Cole Swensen, in her book Such Rich Hour, remembers that folk
consciousness of the nearness and threat of wolves:
One year they even took to entering
the city by swimming up the Seine
because of course the portes were barred and one
year one attacked
a "woman with child" eating first
the unborn and that
seemed worse to them than the death
of the mother who I say died twice because
and forced to watch there are wolves
in the river as the river is freezing over
they are swimming up the freezing river in droves.
From our fear and our fascination, wolves have appeared in the foreground
and the background of our stories, our dreams, and our nightmares, even as
the wolves in Kathy Treadwell's painting, Full Moon Night, appear both as
a visible pack and as a palpable presence behind the trees of the forest.
(Of course, for all that supposed fear, some distant ancestor of ours
tamed a wolf and fed it meat from her hand to make that wolf a dog.)
But what do wolves mean to us now, here, in this hour, on this cold night?
Most of our readers have never seen or heard a wolf in the wild. In many
parts of the world they no longer exist. As George Moore's poem
"Extinctions" laments:
Gray wolf
to Arctic, Red wolf
to Mexico, barely disturbed
except by the mingling
of our extinctions.
In the interest of securing ranch country for cattle or other livestock, our
species has all but eliminated wolves. There is a rare beauty to M. Kathryn
Field's "The Story of the Wolf," in which Field, who works in Grand
Teton National Park, pushes us to relearn the wonder of hearing "the
howled stories of the wolf" present and alive in our ears:
There is no word to define his life,
No measure
To his lonely cry,
To the smell of his coat
Caked with deer and elk and
Moose droppings,
To the searching howl for a mate.
Page 2
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