- THE INDIVIDUAL ANIMAL IN POETRY211
- Robert Penn Warren, New and Selected Poems, 1923–1985 (New York: Random House,
1985), 8–9. - William Carlos Williams, The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, vol. 2,
1939–1962, ed. Christopher MacGowan (New York: New Directions, 1991), 291–94.
The poem was written nearly forty years after the death of Williams’s father. - Though, ironically, Jesus’s point here is ultimately that because God knows even of
the death of a sparrow, “fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many spar-
rows.” Matthew 10:31. - Poems about pet dogs and cats are numerous and popular. There are anthologies full
of them. - Maxine Kumin, Looking for Luck (New York: Norton, 1992), 24.
- Maxine Kumin, “Brushing the Aunts,” Our Ground Time Here Will Be Brief (New
York: Viking, 1982), 137. - Kumin, Our Ground Time Here Will Be Brief, 133.
- James Wright, Above the River: The Complete Poems (New York: Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 1992), 143. - James Dickey sees Wright’s whole oeuvre as “soft at the core,” filled with domestic
animals. However, Dickey’s lovely “A Dog Sleeping on My Feet” also describes the
profound effects of physical contact with his dog, which he expresses care for by
refusing to move for fear of disturbing the dog. The poem describes the dog’s sleep as
slowly spreading through the speaker, becoming a poem, and giving him access to
the dog’s dream of chasing a fox. James Dickey, “Give-Down and Outrage: The Poetry
of the Last Straw,” Southern Review 27 (1991): 430–37. - Denise Levertov, Poems, 1960–1967 (New York: New Directions, 1967), 23.
- See, for instance, Deborah L. Wells, “Domestic Dogs and Human Health: An Over-
view,” British Journal of Health Psychology 12 (2007): 145–56. - Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “pet,” accessed July 9, 2015, http: //www .oed .com /.
The OED shows the noun and verb forms of the word are inextricably linked. - Robert Wrigley’s “Kissing a Horse” explores this idea even further, the meeting of
lips giving the speaker contact with “a world that meant no harm.” Earthly Medita-
tions: New and Selected Poems (New York: Penguin, 2006), 170. - Levertov, Poems, 190.
- Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Scribner, 1970).
- Levertov’s poetry about animals represents them as part of God’s community of crea-
tures and, like humans, expressions of God’s being and love, at once symbols and
bodies. See, for instance, “Moon Tiger” and the beautiful “Ce bruit de la mer,” which
imagines what the sound of the sea means for a wild horse. - Wordsworth: The Poems, 364.
- Critics have suggested a host of possibilities for whom “she” refers to: Wordsworth’s
mother, a lover, the “Lucy” of several of his other lyrics, and his own lost childhood.
My evidence for my argument is that after the death of my first dog, this poem came
forcefully to mind as expressing my own grief, and I still cannot teach or talk about
this poem now without fully remembering that most surprising and shocking grief.
barry
(Barry)
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