Dogs in Poetry

This is how poetry makes me feel: 

"Eat your damn Thoreau, kid."

However, if I swallow my distaste, I find poems that I absolutely love!! My favorite poem is probably "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T. S. Eliot. I'm a huge Eliot fan. I also love Sylvia Plath, Robert Frost, John Milton, and Emily Dickinson. If we're going to continue the picky eater analogy, Shakespeare is my dino chicken nuggets and Aphra Behn is my Kraft mac and cheese. Tried-and-true. 

"Mmm.. Sonnets From the Portuguese"

The problem with poetry is it needs to strike a balance between strong emotion and a tight structure, specifics and abstractions, floweriness and concision. Most poetry I feel misses the mark. It's too sappy, too rhymey, too vague, and way too long. And I should know. My works have been rejected from many a poetry contest. 

Side note: poetry contests are sorta rigged. Most people write about something happening in their life, which is cool, but there's no universe in which I, a boring WASP, can win to a poem written by a refugee who escaped a brutal war in their home country so that they could receive treatment for a rare and life-threatening disease and fell in love with the nurse, who ended up being an axe murderer. It becomes the Pain Olympics. 

I have a little bit of knowledge about formal poetic analysis, but I mostly judge based on my general impression. I was in a creative writing class in high school, but our teacher just told us to write about our "spirit animals" and asked us to expose our deepest darkest secrets to the class. I, unfortunately, wrote many love poems, which I deeply regret, and parodies of The Red Wheelbarrow, because I really do hate William Carlos Williams. 

This wheelbarrow tipped over once, on October 24th, 1929. A lot depends on it.

Given my background on poetry in general, you may now use this information to take my opinions on the dog poems with as many grains of salt as you think necessary. 

"Dog" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I liked how this was separated out into ideas with the line "The dog trots freely in the street". It keeps us grounded in the poem. I think there was a good amount of sensory detail, which is important especially when writing about dogs. I don't like when they mess around by moving words on the page. If you can't express an idea by saying words, say it with pictures or something. Weird line breaks to me feel like you're out of ideas. 

"Dogs Who Are Poets and Movie Stars" by David Kirby

This is a really interesting concept. I liked how he compared people who resembled their dogs to the myth of Circe. However, I don't understand why it's formatted into stanzas when it reads like a piece of prose. It feels like someone is telling a story, but they're pausing in weird spots.

"Introduction to Dogs, An" by Ogden Nash

Love it! I love Ogden Nash. Poetry can be silly and fun. It reminds me of how I write. I like to write backwards, starting with the ending line and then setting up the preceding ones like dominoes so it falls into place. It reads like a little song. I'm not sure it really says anything new about dogs, but we were promised an introduction and Nash delivers. 

"The Power of the Dog" by Rudyard Kipling

First of all, I still haven't forgotten "The White Man's Burden". Not a great look. Furthermore, does he kick his dog? Why does he want his dog to worship him? I feel like he's sad because he's losing someone who will follow him unquestioningly. However, I do appreciate that he asks us why we would get a pet if we know it will die. I had betta fish for years, so I know the feeling. Pets don't last forever. As someone who has buried dozens of pets "at sea" (flushed them down the toilet), I feel like the best we can do is give them a happy life while they're with us. 

"Mother Doesn't Want a Dog" by Judith Viorst

Further proving my theory that everyone named Judith is a legend. Great poem. I never expected the snake twist. I also heard all of those things when I was petitioning my parents for a dog. I still hear all of those things about my dog. I really like how the word choice sounds like the sort of thing a child would say. 

"A Dog has Died" by Pablo Neruda

I watched il Postino, an Italian movie where a post officer meets Pablo Neruda, who teaches him how to write poetry to get his crush to fall in love with him. It had a really nice soundtrack.  

This is a really beautiful poem. It's so heartfelt, but avoids melodrama. It's honest. It's concise. It's about his dog, but also the nature of friendship and a sort of quotidian grief. 

"To Flush, My Dog" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

First of all, the meter and rhyme is beautiful. It just rolls off the tongue to read. It feels organic within its structure, like roses on a trellis. Also, I love how she wrote about her dog comforting her when she's sad. It reminds me of my guinea pig, Dusty Rhodes (named after the Ohio county auditor). After a long day of school or work, I would put her in my jacket, turn on the Simpsons, and she would lick my arm until she fell asleep. Did you know guinea pigs purr? It soothes the soul. 

As for my contribution to dog poetry, here's I'm A Puppy, a song by Walter Martin. I found a version someone made with videos of puppies, so I thought that might sweeten the deal.