Message 27: Optimistic Piggy

The third six-line stanza of “Optimistic” reads:

This one’s optimistic
This one went to market
This one just came out of the swamp
This one dropped a payload
Fodder for the animals
Living on animal farm

The first four lines allude to the Mother Goose folk song and finger game “This Pig Went to Market” (ca. 1728). In “The Pig: Profit and Loss,” Gilles Stassart writes that “contemporary art […] feeds off of flesh and pork-related problematics. Damien Hirst’s halved and bottled pigs reveal the inner and outer form of the pig, as if we had long-since forgotten it.”

The text of Animal Farm is available online.