Telling a Dog to Stay

 

Artist: Reeta Juneja

The baroque poet Daniel Groves came and gave a reading at St. Mary’s two weeks ago.  I bought his book The Lost Boys and have been agonizing about which of his wonderful poems to share with you.  Since I know that some of you are dog lovers and have had the experience, as I had three years ago, of watching a pet “put down,” I offer you this one.  It is sad and playful both and may bring a smile amidst the tears.

I call Daniel “baroque” because he plays with language in a way that few contemporary poets do.  He reminds me of John Donne, both in his conceits (elaborate metaphors) and in his conversational tone.  He compares a relationship to a chemistry experiment in one poem and then turns around and compares it to a playground seesaw in another.

Often he twists words every which way, ferreting out multiple puns and images until he has exhausted the subject.  As an example that also honors Library Week, I offer up the following passage (from “Death of the Author) about mouldering books.  How many puns can you uncover?

…Preservation staff,
shelf-life support, can do so much about
dog-ears, foxing–cooling after the chase,
the printed page’s chemicals efface,

obliterate it, gradually, inside out,

causing noncirculation, codices
and decomposing authors’ co-decease;
the bookworm’s bite; the end sheet eaten through;
the will in solemn form, the heritage trust:
fresh kindling–all but lit, a film of dust
stamped on, fine; adieu-date, over due.

When I had my book signed, I told Daniel that I felt he bit into language as one does a luscious peach, reveling in the tastes and textures.  As I think about it further, however, a more appropriate analogy would be a glass of fine wine: Daniel swirls his words around in his glass, holds them up to the light, smells them, savors them on his tongue, and finally spits them out on the page.

Note how, in “Dog’s Life,” he plays with many words that we use with our dogs, “stay” being a big one.  It takes me back to telling our Husky-Springer Spaniel mix (the boys named her Athena) to stay.  She never listened:

A Dog’s Life

By Daniel Groves

A stay of execution: one last day,
your day, old Everydog, then, as they say,
or as we say (a new trick to avoid
finalities implicit in destroyed),
you have to be put down, or put to sleep
the very dog who always fought to keep
from putting down, despite our shouts, a shoe
before its bottom sole was gnawed straight through;
and sat awake, our sleepless nights, to bark
away some menace looming in the dark.

No picking up the sense of all this talk;
you only prick your ears to hear a walk,
or else, the ultimate reward, a car
My God, tomorrow’s ride . . . Well, here we are,
right now. You stare at me and wag your tail;
I stare back, dog-like: big and dumb. Words fail.
No more commands, ignore my monologue,
go wander off. Good dog. You’re a good dog;
and never could quite master, anyway,
the execution, as it were, of Stay.

 

Published in The Lost Boys (University of Georgia Press, 2010); first appeared in Poetry, May 2003. Other dog paintings by artist Reeta Juneja can be found here.

 

Go here to subscribe to the weekly newsletter summarizing the week’s posts. Your e-mail address will be kept confidential.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

3 Comments

  1. WordPress › Error

    There has been a critical error on this website.

    Learn more about troubleshooting WordPress.