Kenneth Roberts

Poets ignore Maine's blood-sucking reality

Black fly. The blood-loving insect drives fishermen and other visitors crazy in inland northern Maine from late May to July. New England Diary's editor experienced the horror during a fishing trip to Moosehead Lake.

Black fly. The blood-loving insect drives fishermen and other visitors crazy in inland northern Maine from late May to July. New England Diary's editor experienced the horror during a fishing trip to Moosehead Lake.

"It seems odd that in all the years during which poets have sung of the lure of the Great North Woods {of Maine} not one of them has made even passing mention of midges and black flies...{It} gives rise to the suspicion that the poets of the great outdoors...have never been north of Portsmouth, N.H.''

-- Kenneth Roberts, in Authors Only (1935)