# Pickering — Poetry character guide

> Pickering in Poetry by Ambrose Bierce.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Mr. Pickering

**First appearance:** 0000-poetry

## Snapshot

Mr. Pickering moves through Bierce's verses as a name invoked in the poet's feuds, a foil for the critic's vanity and the satirist's relentless pen.

## Who they are

Pickering belongs to the crowded gallery of Bierce's targets, a figure whose proper name surfaces amid the poet's tirades against critics, lawyers, and self-promoters. He is less a fully drawn personality than a marker of the social world Bierce skewers, where reputations are made by writing over another's text in different ink. His presence in the early-middle arc reinforces the poet's central complaint: that meaner names link themselves to better work, and that the hateful palimpsest hides the original text.

## In the story

### [One and One Are Two](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_se/chapters/one-and-one-are-two)

Rises from the dead with a wobbling motion due to a missing ear; gains entry to heaven by admitting he is a liar.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_se/characters/pickering
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- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_se/characters