Dogs and Poetry [by Richard Garcia]

Even when when Buffy was a puppy, I began to suspect that she could read.  At that time, Charles Harper Webb would come over to our house every couple of weeks and we would critique each other’s poems.  There would be poems spread out on the couch.  Buffy would lie on the couch too, on her belly with her paws spread out, a pencil dangling from her mouth.  Sometimes she would look down at a poem between her paws and seem to regard it. 

I thought that was kind of fun but did not take it seriously.  Then one day Buffy stole a box of Milk Bones.  She ate all the Milk Bones, and then ate the box.  But she did not eat the coupon that gave a discount on the next box of Milk Bones.  I found it, neatly chomped at its perforations, on the doormat, right side up. 

Sometimes, if I had left a lower file drawer open, she would push the files and papers with her nose. Then, carefully, she would extract one sheet of paper and walk off with it.

One day I was working on a poem that had been accepted by a journal.  The editor had asked for a couple of small rewrites.  I finished, and then left my desk for a while.  When I came back, the poem was gone.  I searched all through the house and could not find it.  Now, I am still not claiming that my dog could read, but I did find the poem on the front lawn, right side up. When I bent to retrieve it I noticed a paw print.  Underneath the paw print, there was a typo.

Louie can’t read, but he is fabled in poetry and song.  That is, he has gotten into my poems. I have placed him in a poem as a psychiatrist in my poem “Louie, M.D., Ph.D.”

http://www.webdelsol.com/Perihelion/garcia.htm

And the white tip on his tail is the inspiration for my poem “Adam and Eve’s Dog”

He has a speaking part in the poem “Motel Six, Paducah, Kentucky” in my book,

The Persistence of Objects.

And he is celebrated by my wife, Katherine Williams, ala Christopher Smart, in her poem "Jubilate Louie." 

http://www.poemeleon.org/katherine-williams/

Which brings to mind the greatest cat poem of all time, “Jubilate Agno.”

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/661.html

Here is some interesting background on the poem:

http://www.pseudopodium.org/repress/jubilate/

Jim Harrison’s recent poems are full of dogs. Michael Chitwood, a poet known for his spiritual poems, seems to have quite a few dogs in his poetry too.

http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v6n2/poetry/chitwood_m/index.htm

Dog

Michael Chitwood

I pray that my dog will live.

I ask the Lord, the Almighty,

Yahweh, I Am That I Am

to keep my dog alive

even though he has righteous gas

and a broken tooth,

even though soaking wet

he smells like old shoes soaked in urine,

even though he's going to have to squat, trembling,

and shit out the pair of pantyhose he's eaten,

still I pray for his life.

 

I pray out loud to the Lawgiver, Nation-smasher,

Deliverer, Kingdom-maker, the Old Pharaoh-thrasher himself

and do not feel ridiculous. Out loud.

Please let this dog live, I say

to the one who laid the foundations of the earth,

who shut in the sea with doors

when it burst forth from the womb,

please let this bad, matted-rug-of-a-dog live.

 

What else could I do

with a dog possibly foundered on pantyhose,

a dog whose sleeping head warms my lap?

What else

but speak aloud to an empty room,

to address walls and windows

and the air beyond

and the beyond beyond,

the Thunderhead Troubleshooter

we turn to when turning the prayer wheel again?

And there is this sonnet by Mark Doty from

Unleashed: Poems by Writers' Dogs (Amy Hempel & Jim Shepard)

Golden Retrievals

Mark Doty

Fetch? Balls and sticks capture my attention

seconds at a time. Catch? I don't think so.

Bunny, tumbling leaf, a squirrel who's -- oh

joy -- actually scared. Sniff the wind, then

 

I'm off again: muck, pond, ditch, residue

of any thrillingly dead thing. And you?

Either you're sunk in the past, half our walk,

thinking of what you can never bring back,

 

or else you're off in some fog concerning

-- tomorrow, is that what you call it? My work:

to unsnare time's warp (and woof!), retrieving,

my haze-headed friend, you. This shining bark,

 

a Zen master's bronzy gong, calls you here,

entirely, now: bow-wow, bow-wow, bow-wow.

We love our dogs, of course, and maybe it is amusing to put them in our poems, or to try and write from their point of view.  But most important is what we have in common with the dog:  we have both left the garden. Some scholars have even surmised that early man learned how to hunt by studying how dogs hunt. In some situations and cultures we depend on them for survival. Dogs have chosen to have two or three paws in the human world, and are on the same journey of consciousness that we are on.  They may even be leading it.

 

 

Ed note: This post is from the archive and first appeared on July 22, 2009

Comments

[Laura Orem]

Lovely! And as someone owned by three dogs, I can vouch that it is as true as true.

My favorite poem from the "Unleashed" anthology is this one, by Karen Shepard's dog, Birch:

"You gonna eat that?
You gonna eat that?
You gonna eat that?

I'll eat that."

[Richard Garcia]

Thanks for the poem by Karen Shepard's dog. I love it. Katherine works in a science lab, they are doing research on coral. One of her duties is to bring a poem to read for their weekly meeting. She will bring that one today. Her boss loves dogs, and she is the one who has the blog that my Adam and Eve's poem is on. I also had a dog that could talk. But that is another story.

Richard

[Laura Orem]

"Adam and Eve's Dog" is a wonderful poem, I forgot to say.

And I think I speak for the rest of BAP readers when I say, tell us about the talking dog.

[Jenny Factor]

Every year or two, I go looking for a dog poem I saw once by a younger woman poet, pre-first book--and I can never find it. It might have been a prose poem; certainly it's anaphora-based.

I believe it's written to her labrador retriever, who may or may not be called Addy, and the idea is that "God is alive and well and moving through Brooklyn (I paraphrase--I can't seem to find the poem) in the form of a labrador retriever named...? (possibly Addy). My favorite part is when the speaker says that if Addy were a person, she would wash and fold strangers' laundry.

David Lehman also has a wonderful dog poem set with a friend's dog over the Jewish High Holidays. Here's the link:
http://www.writersreps.com/feature.aspx?FeatureID=70

The link to Katherine's work was wonderful, btw

[Richard Garcia]

I don't know that one, but here is a beautiful dog poem from Verse Daily:

An Ancient Dog Grave, Unearthed During Construction of the Athens Metro
A.E. Stallings

It is not the curled-up bones, nor even the grave
That stops me, but the blue beads on the collar
(Whose leather has long gone the way of hides),
The ones to ward off evil. A careful master
Even now protects a favorite, just so.
But what evil could she suffer after death?
I picture the loyal companion, bereaved of her master,
Trotting the long, dark way that slopes to the river,
Nearly trampled by all the nations marching down,
One war after another, flood or famine,
Her paws sucked by the thick, caliginous mud,
Deep as her dewclaws, near the riverbank.
In the press for the ferry, who will lift her into the boat?
Will she cower under the pier and be forgotten,
Forever howling and whimpering, tail tucked under?
What stranger pays her passage? Perhaps she swims,
Dog-paddling the current of oblivion.
A shake as she scrambles ashore sets the beads jingling.
And then, that last, tense moment — touching noses
Once, twice, three times, with unleashed Cerberus.

from his book Measure

[Laura Orem]

Another great poem!

Dogs are terrific. One of my favorite dog poems is "Dog" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. When I teach it, I bring my little terrier in to school to get us in the right frame of mind. Here's a link to it (when I tried to post it here, the enjambment got screwed up).

http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/dog.html

[Ken Lauter]

Thanks, Richard for the Great Dog Tour. It was fun-- and deeply serious as well, right?

I've just started reading a book which may interest you: 'Dog Is Love: Why and How Your Dog Loves You,' by Clive D.L. Wynne, PhD. He is the Founding Director of the Canine Science Collaboratory at Arizona State University.

Take a look. I'd love hear what you think of it.

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