ROBERT BLY: IS THE TAIL WAGGING THE DOG?

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2004/02/16

Robert Bly’s “The Resemblance between Your Life and a Dog” might, in its accessibility, make Billy Collins and others proud. That is not a criticism; there are various ways for a poem to make an impact, to have staying power. Poems that wear everyday clothing might entice more people to stroll along with them, and during those casual walks, some surprising turns can happen, events that are more challenging and magical than first glances indicate.

Ovenbird? Thrush?

Comparing a human life to a stray dog—not just the cliché of a dog’s life, but the dog itself—probably qualifies as a poetic “conceit”—a metaphor or simile that is extremely far-fetched. In any case, Bly establishes his conceit immediately, and I was interested to follow his opening surprise. How does that wagging coexist with the life he “never intended to have?” Where will he go with this mutt that cannot articulate much, but wags—not just its tail, it seems, but its whole self?

The answers, both literal and richly connotative, are:  a boy’s bedroom mirror, a clear river,
mountain wind, a sparrow in winter (which somehow ends up in the same poetic line as the boy’s teachers—explain that), and finally, a return to the stray dog, which is not exactly the lovable pooch of cliché country, but a dog that “Doesn’t particularly like you.”

Mirror

Winter Sparrow

Yet you must live with him, and vice versa, wondering all the while who owns whom. Especially for those who don’t like poems with bookends, I’ll argue that that’s a remarkable and wonderful circling back to the opening line:  “I never intended to have this life.”

Whether we inhabit a life or it inhabits us, and how much control we have over our lives—those questions crop up periodically (or is it daily?).  Maybe they are merely new phrasings about fatalism, destiny, and such, but Bly shakes it up in a more substantial way, I think. He offers this seemingly small, comfortable chat—dog, farm, wagging, sparrow, river, wind—until we realize we’re facing a big question: Who can say he intended to have this life? Who chose the life he’s had? Who among us can say confidently and honestly how he’d have reacted, at age ten or twenty, if he’d been told what lay ahead in his life? Even the most comfortable among us might have been stronger, waggier, than we’d ever have thought possible.

APPENDIX:

I’ve known a couple of people who confess that they read the last few pages of a novel before they start Page One. That’s always struck me as not merely odd, but wrongheaded, somewhere between eccentricity and neurosis. Then again, I’m the guy who rarely finishes novels, period.

Although Bly’s poem seems to be well known, I only stumbled across it for the first time this morning in an anthology I’ve long meant to recommend, though it’s a bit pricey (my used copy was $18 at Amazon):  Contemporary American Poetry, eds. A. Poulin, Jr. and Michael Waters. The contents vary somewhat according to the edition; I’ve been very satisfied with the 6^th and 8^th editions.

By the way, after Bly’s poem, The Writer’s Almanac notes on the novelist Richard Ford are pretty interesting. I still haven’t gotten to Ford’s The Sportswriter; maybe this new bit of info will be the kick in the pants I need.

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2004/02/16