"Frogs Eat Butterflies. Snakes Eat Frogs. Hogs Eat Snakes. Men Eat Hogs" is a poem from Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens was an American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as a lawyer for the Hartford insurance company in Connecticut.His best-known poems include "Anecdote of the Jar",...

's first book of poetry, Harmonium

Harmonium (poetry collection)

Harmonium is a book of poetry by U.S. poet Wallace Stevens. His first book, it was published in 1923 by Knopf in an edition of 1500 copies. He was in middle age at that time, forty-four years old. The collection comprises 85 poems, ranging in length from just a few lines to several hundred...

. It was first published in The Dial in 1922 and is therefore in the public domain.

Frogs Eat Butterflies. Snakes Eat Frogs. Hogs Eat Snakes. Men Eat Hogs  It is true that the rivers went nosing like swine,  Tugging at banks, until they seemed  Bland belly-sounds in somnolent troughs,  That the air was heavy with the breath of these swine,  The breath of turgid summer, and  Heavy with thunder's rattapallax,  That the man who erected this cabin, planted  This field, and tended it awhile,  Knew not the quirks of imagery,  That the hours of his indolent, arid days,  Grotesque with this nosing in banks,  This somnolence and rattapallax,  Seemed to suckle themselves on his arid being,  As the swine-like rivers suckled themselves  While they went seaward to the sea-mouths.

This poem's title is one of those that rankled with Louis Untermeyer

Louis Untermeyer

Louis Untermeyer was an American poet, anthologist, critic, and editor. He was appointed the fourteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1961.-Life and career:...

, but Stevens insisted on it in preference to the abbreviated "Frogs Eat Butterflies", which he wrote in a 1922 letter, "would have an affected appearance, which I should dislike." If "The Worms at Heaven's Gate

The Worms at Heaven's Gate

The Worms at Heaven's Gate is a poem from Wallace Stevens' first book of poetry, Harmonium . It was first published in 1916 and is therefore in the public domain....

" is about death, then "Frogs" is about aging. The poem takes advantage of quirks of imagery, in this case at the expense of the man whose hours suckle themselves on his being, just as rivers nosed at the banks like swine at a trough.
Such quirks may be compared to those in "Anecdote of Canna

Anecdote of Canna

"Anecdote of Canna" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium .In the poem's legerdemain the cryptic middle stanza conceals the sleight of hand. Poor X wakes in his sleep and consequently his eye clings to the canna forever. The cleverness of the poem links it to "The Worms...

".