Homo ferus
Libby Foster
Summertime in Paris | Anna-Maria Rahkonen | Photography
you found me in the forest
and called me a half-witted brute
eyes made of rags turning black
i come to your camp
the clearing where my cradle dropped
and pull a boiling potato out of the coals
you thank me but i can’t understand
crooked smiles of fear and disbelief
writing in your leather-bound
abandoned in infancy no doubt
source of inhuman strength:
innocence traded for survival
a study of man’s flaws sharpened
i am
my only memory
her saying goodbye
over a dawn or dusk sky
my blinks slowed
her voice echoed
through my toddler dreams
repeating with each hungry sunrise
Interview with the Author
What was the inspiration for this piece?
For this piece, I was inspired by a passage in Ruth Benedict’s Patterns of Culture. Benedict details the anthropological theory of a child abandoned from birth in the woods known as Homo ferus,. Traditional anthropologists imagined Homo ferus to be a midget-like savage clothed in rags. In this poem, I tried to create an image of this theoretical being interacting with a civilized human for the first time. More than anything, the child is still haunted by a lasting memory of abandonment even in this interaction.
What was your creative process?
I wrote this poem on the steps of Gorgas Library on a Sunday evening in the fall of 2019. I was procrastinating writing an essay on the very book that served as an inspiration for the poem. As I researched more about the concept of Homo ferus, I began to imagine the effect total abandonment and isolation would have on the individual. This poem came from that image.