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

Wordsworth, "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood"

In my teens and twenties, William Wordsworth (1770-1850) might have been my main portal into the world of poetry, although in recent decades I’ve found him verbose, pompous and sententious. Even so, there are parts of The Prelude and the Intimations Ode (“Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”) that still stir me and capture my own thoughts or impressions. 

I’m writing this in the wake of some country drives in the hilly parts of Ohio (south and east of Interstate 71), which—don’t laugh—are a little like Wordsworth’s Lake District in the north of England.

At about five pages, the entire Intimations Ode might be too long for those not inclined toward Wordsworth’s philosophizing, but here is the link for those who'd like it:
     Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood by William Wordsworth : The Poetry Foundation

And here are some parts of the ode that I still find relevant and important:

            There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

       The earth, and every common sight,

                              To me did seem

                      Apparelled in celestial light,

               The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it hath been of yore;—

                      Turn wheresoe'er I may,

                              By night or day.

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

                                                            I raise

                      The song of thanks and praise

               . . .  for those obstinate questionings

               Of sense and outward things,

               Fallings from us, vanishings;

High instincts before which our mortal Nature

Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:

                      But for those first affections,

                      Those shadowy recollections,

               Which, be they what they may

Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,

And of course there's the famous passage that provided the title for the 1961 movie Splendour in the Grass with Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood:

      Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;

                      We will grieve not, rather find

                      Strength in what remains behind;

                      In the primal sympathy

                      Which having been must ever be;

                      In the soothing thoughts that spring

                      Out of human suffering;

                      In the faith that looks through death,

In years that bring the philosophic mind.

I’m now aware that secluded woodlands and farms might be ideal places for odd, foul, or criminal human behaviors, as well as the worship of nature and deities. They are certainly places for working your ass off. Awareness of such realities is part of the sadness of growing up, which Wordsworth addresses in the Ode.

 

However, pastoral scenes still stir me more than art and architecture do. I’ve never lived on a farm or in a remote area and I know nothing firsthand about the details or hardships of such lives. But for me the best manmade sights, sites and occasions in city life have never matched nature’s offerings, where there seems to be plenty of green, open space, variety, peace and silence, until I really listen—at which time there’s a festival in every field, every woods. Or are those the sounds of tornadoes or species slaughtering each other, which is necessary, for them? 

Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood by William Wordsworth : The Poetry Foundation