An Elephant and Three Blind Poets
September 22, 2026
A few weeks ago, Joseph Bottum’s Poems Ancient and Modern substack shared John Saxe’s “The Blind Man and the Elephant.” This 19th-century comic verse describes six blind men trying to understand an elephant by touch. The poem reaches what Bottum calls an “obvious” conclusion — that none of them can be completely right because of … More An Elephant and Three Blind Poets