Negative Capability Press Poetry Blog

Powerful poem, Alexis. I’m not sure about the title. I’ll have to think about that some more — but I’m not sure the “dog” connections resonates with me.

SBW

This is a horrifying “dead end.” I wonder, then, if the vessel is “handsome,” especially if it is also “motionless, vacant, deserted, and abandoned.”

I also wonder if you need the last two lines. I don’t think that you need to “tell” the reader that you noticed. The poem itself does that — and also conveys the “helpless” state.

SBW

Alexis, I like the poem too, but like Sue, I’m not sure about the title, but probably for a different reason.

I am assuming you saw a dead dog on the side of the road, and you are meditating on what was likely a powerful emotional experience. I wonder if the poem would be more powerful if you didn’t reveal that it was a dog until the end. Or, perhaps, never reveal that it was a dog. The clichéd title takes away some of the potential power of the poem, not only by it being a little trite, but also because the term “sleeping” would seem to be misleading, and the word “lie” wants to be a pun, but it doesn’t seem to be one.

Consider personifying the dog a bit in the first five stanzas and then reveal in the last stanza that it is a dog. Just a thought…

I really like this stanza.

Let me try to be a bit clearer about my comment. Sometimes if I read a poem and then comment, I rethink what I thought upon reading the poem again. My initial reaction was to the cliche. (I don’t know how to do accents here). I think that the title leads the reader astray. When I think of the title — or rather the cliche, it seems possibly playful — and I don’t think the poem is playful. It’s serious — and sometimes people are “dogs” so I was right into the connection between the human and the animal.

Then, too, I’m very very aware of titles. I think that the title “may” make or break a poem. It leads the reader into the poem — and indeed sets the reader up in some way. Without the title, the poem may be fine and its ambiguity very interesting / powerful.

And like Rob says: the poem shouldn’t be changed just because one or two readers said so. I remember Richard Eberhart telling me that his reading group didn’t like the ending of “The Groundhog,” a poem the poet thought was one of his best. He refused to change the ending — and believed that the success of the poem, the fact that it was so anthologized — was due to the fact that he refused to make any changes. So, the final sense of the poem should be the poet’s.

Your work is good–and I certainly value Rob’s suggestions. I find that after I tinker with a poem a lot, I don’t know what might be the strongest rendering — and I think, as poets, we can benefit from good suggestions (note I didn’t say “criticism” here.

Sue

Primarily because of a profound lack of ability to let sleeping dogs lie (sorry, I just couldn’t resist…), I wonder if you might, with the new title (also a cliche, perhaps, but not nearly as bad) work the words lost and found into the poem in someway. I would suggest adding a “found” statement into paragraph 5, probably in the second line (something like: what were you before today / before i found you / from my car window…) and then adding a “lost” statement at the end (i noticed you / there / both of us lost / both of us helpless)

Well, I think I like the dog title best. “Lost and found” is another commonplace.

I think that titles are one of the more difficult parts of writing a poem–and one of the more important aspects because it is what an editor sees first.

Look back through the poem — and see if anything in the poem could be a good title.”From Where You Began” stands out for me — so go through the poem — and see what strikes you.

You’ll come up with just the right title. Just keep thinking / dreaming about it.

SBW

5/23/08 Very interesting. I put the date on this comment to put it into context. I just logged on today after a pretty long absence, read ‘how did you get here?’ with its (I learned later) new title and possible other modifications. I just finished reading “Same Kind Of Different As Me”, a memoir concerning a lifelong homeless man. As I read Alexis’ poem I never imagined a dog at all, only a drugged-out homeless man lying on an urban sidewalk. It works.

I agree with Sue that the end is better without the last two lines.

I love the jolting negation in the last line of this stanza, as well as in the first. The fact that the dog is *not* watching the speaker drive by–in fact, not watching anything–adds that extra twist in my stomach as I read. Also, the lines “you are still handsome / but just a vessel now” are beautifully heavy.