“Burrowing in your allotted patch you
move through the dark, muscles contracting one by one
in every part, lengthening and shortening
the slick segmented tube of you, furrows in your wake.
Devising passages for water, air,
you plot the gaps that keep the structure from collapse.
Dead things you know” [...] Read More “Worm” by Gail McConnell
McConnell’s vivid poem “Worm” brings alive an overlooked and vilified creature: the worm. Through tight, powerful words, the poem creates awe for the humble worm. It illustrates the creative and destructive power the worm deploys in its underground domain. The worm’s never-satisfied hunger devouring the dead matter of life. Through digestion, and defecation it makes compost, ripe for transformation and ready to nourish new life.
McConnel never mentions the word “worm” in the poem’s lines, instead using“you.” This invites us to embrace the worm and into the intimacy of the underground burrows. This invocation allows us to embody the rich creativeness of the eyeless and deathless underworld. Pádraig Ó Tuama, the host of the Poetry Unbound Podcast, notes that the length of lines varies throughout the poem. They are inconsistent and segmented, visually and auditorily resembling the worm (Ó Tuama), inviting us to feel what we cannot see.
The mythic pervades the poem, evoking archetypal images. The soul is in command of this poem and plunges us into the ground, away from the ego and into the psyche’s world.
Serpent Mythologies
The central archetypal image of the poem is the serpent, one of humanity’s most ancient images. Countless stories, images and myths populate the world. Many cultures both fear and revere these slithering creatures. Snake’s depictions, worship, and cultural impressions often contradict each other. Sometimes the serpent is a healer, bringing fertility and life, and other times it represents death.
I do not like the imposition of “universal” ideas when they are foisted by one culture onto another culture. That said, there are human experiences we share, though the response to them, as well as their meaning and significance, is specific to our respective cultures. The abundance of serpent mythology suggests that snakes are a common human experience.
Many cultures both fear and revere these slithering creatures. Snake’s depictions, worship, and cultural impressions often contradict each other.
Lynne Isbell, and ethologist and primatologist attributes that serpent stories and fears to the fact that snakes were one of the few predators of apes and early humans. This fear could be encoded in DNA, as our limbic system reflexively responds with fear/flight to a serpent shape even before our higher brain has registered that we have seen it. The most commonly reported phobia is snakes (Isbell 2-8) even though many people never come into contact with them outside of zoos.
Worm Variations
Although serpents, snakes, and worms are zoologically different creatures, mythically a “worm” is a “snake.” Its imagery is an amplification of the mythic power of the serpent, such as the alchemical ouroboros. Many cultural symbols depict the snake devouring its own tail. The earliest dates back to 1600 BCE Egypt and in the Enigmatic Book of the Netherworld.
Norse Worms
In Europe, people used the now-archaic old English word “wyrm” interchangeably with snake, serpent, caterpillar, and dragon (Merriam-Webster). Northern Europe has many stories of giant serpents or wyrms, such as The Midgard Serpent and Nidhogg. The Midgard Serpent lived in the sea and grew so large that it encircled the world, eating its tail. Norse myth states that if the tail ever became dislodged from its mouth, it would destroy the world, ushering in Ragnarok. Nidhogg, lived in the underworld Niflheim. There Nidhogg gnawed on Yggdrasil, the World Tree, in an attempt to destroy creation.
In Britain, stories about giant wyrms terrorizing populations and being slain by heroes abound, such as the Lambton Worm, the Sockburn Worm, and the Worm of Linton. Men embarked on quests to vanquish them, transforming them into heroes.
Worms and Dragons
“Wyrm” also means dragon. Beowulf defeats a fireworm in the epic poem. In Mesoamerica, the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl “Precious serpent” was a flying feathered snake and In Mongolian folklore, the massive death worm lives in the sand. In Greek myth, Perseus slew Medusa and Cadmus slew a serpent, after which he founded the city of Thebes. In Hinduism, the enormous naga is a deity that takes the form of a snake. And since snakes are in opposition to their own symbology, the Hebrew Bible’s snake is a depiction of evil and Satan and responsible for tempting humans, resulting in their exile from the garden. This ejection, however, does force humanity to create life anew.
Actual Worms
Less likely to devour a village, silkworms and caterpillars also appear in mythology. In Asia, silkworms produce a thread turned into silk, while in the United States, the March full moon is called Worm Moon. It’s named for the Naudowessie people’s observance of the “worm” which signals spring (Almanac). Caterpillars have the unique ability of metamorphosis. Dieing in the cocoon, its organs dissolve, turning to mush. From this substance, a butterfly is born (Krulwich). Worms, skin shedding snakes, and re-growing hydra heads are symbology for re-birth and alchemical transformation. One aspect of many shamanistic initiations, puberty rites, involves entering into ritualistic death symbolized by the “belly of the beast” (Eliade 71-75) to be born again. An ancient image is in the story of Gilgamesh. The snake eats the herbs of immortality that brings Gilgamesh back from the underworld, completing the death and rebirth cycle.
Caterpillars have the unique ability of metamorphosis. Dieing in the cocoon, its organs dissolve, turning to mush. From this substance, a butterfly is born (Krulwich). Worms, skin shedding snakes, and re-growing hydra heads are symbology for re-birth and alchemical transformation.
Wormy Unconscious
McConnell’s poem emphasizes the transformative power of the worm, similar to the transformation of the butterfly. The Greek word psyche means both soul and butterfly (ψυχή). McConnell’s, besides drawing on the wyrm, draws on the psyche. “Eco” is from the Greek word for “dwelling.” Everything on the planet dwells in an ecosystem of interdependence. Nothing happens in isolation as everything is an exchange of energy. Creative energy also destroys, decomposes, and recreates. Out of this cycle comes soul making. The psyche desires to go inward, into the underworld. According to James Hillman, the soul is created through taking things apart, destruction, dissolving, decomposing, and disintegrating. (27). These are processes that happen in the underworld, in the world of the worm.
Nothing happens in isolation as everything is an exchange of energy. Creative energy also destroys, decomposes, and recreates. Out of this cycle comes soul making.
Here is where the You of the poem resonates. The “you” is the psyche, the unconscious. It is the hidden constant work of soul-making. Like the worm, the soul sifts through and aerates the world.
As we traverse the underworld, confronting our shadows, we decompose and “ingest to differentiate” and “express what you can part with, as self-possessed as when you started.” Our defecation enriches and re-builds through decomposition and rebirth. “You” encounter grief, terror and joy. “You” create passages for air, breath – soul. Through these dark tunnels, filled with decaying matter, the passage is held up to make room for the soul. “You” are both the architect and the demolitionist, constantly undoing and redoing, in an unceasing relationship with the world. In the underworld and home of the worm, death is not ominous. There is nothing to fear.
Works Cited
Eliade, Mircea. Rites and Symbols of Initiation: The Mysteries of Birth and Rebirth. Trans.
From the French by Willard R. Trask. Harper & Row, 1975.
“Full Moon for March 2022.” Almanac.com, 16 Mar. 2022, www.almanac.com/content/full-
moon-march.
Hillman, James. The Dream and the Underworld. New York, Harper Collins Publishers, 1979.
Isbell, Lynne A. The Fruit, the Tree, and the Serpent: Why We See so Well. Harvard University Press, 2009.
Krulwich, Robert. “Are Butterflies Two Different Animals in One? The Death and Resurrection
Theory.” NPR, 1 Aug. 2012, www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/08/01/157718428/are-
butterflies-two-different-animals-in-one-the-death-and-resurrection-theory
McConnell, Gail. “Worm.” 1975. On Being, https://onbeing.org/poetry/worm/
Ó Tuama, Pádraig, host. “Gail McConnell Worm.” Poetry Unbound, 4, 10, On Being Studios,
29 October 2021, https://onbeing.org/programs/gail-mcconnell-worm/.
“Worm.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/worm. Accessed 25 Apr. 2022.
“ψυχή.” Logeion, University of Chicago, logeion.uchicago.edu/%CF%88%CF%85%CF%87%CE %AE.
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