May 27

For whoever stumbles on this site... The 5 poems of the week:
2 line poem by Alexander Pope
A Popular Personage at Home  by Thomas Hardy
Dog by Lawrence Ferlinghetti  
Emily Dickinson A little Dog that wags his tail
Monologue of a Dog Ensnared in History by Wislawa Szymborska

 I am grateful that 16 people came today to continue this weekly tradition of gathering to read the poems aloud and discuss.  Zoom technology may not allow the same sense of connection, but connected we are, and as ever, richer for it.
We started by testing our microphones with a sentence about dogs... 
If you ever are at a loss of a conversation topic, this is a winner!  You do not have to love dogs,
you do not need to have known the incredible gift dogs give those who care for them to appreciate the  association of those who give. without question, with fidelity... who have a joy unto themselves, nor the history where dog is metaphor for the one controlled.  These poems allow the dogness of dogs, in all the doggedness of life to help us.

2 line poem by Alexander Pope
Anyone at court is someone's dog!  The stinging question is how to avoid a master and remain
one's true self.
A Popular Personage at Home  by Thomas Hardy
The title does not prepare us to expect a dog!  After 5 stanzas, a change of speaker.
Dog by Lawrence Ferlinghetti   

Perhaps the favorite in the discussion today: how he stages the repeated first line, travels the neighborhood, 

and that detail of Chickens in Chinatown windows… //their heads a block away  and then breaks out

as a “real realist” with the lines also breaking out—

a delightful way of reminding us to be living question marks as we look into  “the great gramophone of puzzling existence”. 

As for the RCA Victor* symbol,  Thank you Barb for filling us in on the 1898 painting "His Master's Voice. https://www.startribune.com/the-hidden-history-behind-nipper-one-of-the-most-famous-dogs-in-the-world/506221042/

you might enjoy this angle about Nipper, the dog listening attentively into the gramophone.  https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-wrong-dog

John, found out from Stacey Lewis at City Lights that Mr. Ferlinghetti's health is such he won't be able to address  our query to why he  changed “seriously” to serious 52 years after published “Dog”
Marna brought up the homonym, Serious... as Sirius, the Dog Star

Emily Dickinson A little Dog that wags his tail
This is more than A "little jack horner" flavor to "what a good boy am I" applied to a dog?
Unselfconscious Innocence, vs. a cat pinned to her reputation as mouse-catcher... (with that war-mongering adjective "martial") and a boy pinned to his reputation as noise-maker by those who neither "please nor play".  If the wag of the tail be pleasing for no reason, that is reason enough,
is aligned with the boy who appears in stanzas 1,2,4.  No child is seen or heard in the adult world, those serious grown-ups too tired to enjoy such abandon, aligned with cat.

Monologue of a Dog Ensnared in History by Wislawa Szymborska
Szymborska’s monologue  struck at the heart…  the point of view of the dog accentuates the  impact of senseless and incomprehensible whether you want to believe it was Hitler’s Dog, or some other master…   “There’s fate and fate.”  Back to Pope reminding us not to be someone’s dog.
We admired the title which seemed to point to Poland's history, WW2, the Holocaust, and the universal lessons...

from John: https://www.google.com/search?q=if+dogs+run+free+lyrics&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari

He highly recommends Mitchener’s Poland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland_(novel)

and Jan Karsky : https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/may/08/karski-story-of-secret-state-review
We were the lucky ones: http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-we-were-the-lucky-ones/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwn7j2BRDrARIsAHJkxmwUR8Xdb-tCJOPyLrNnyd2Cabn5YLd8HAqhNRQB_90MbNUCobIxzEEaAn6dEALw_wcB#gsc.tab=0

Sent to those present. 

Although we only had a few samples of the strength of having the dog take the microphone, it gave rise to

all sorts of considerations about “masters”, how to cope with them, the imperative to resist them, the curious bondage to their  position which in turn raises the question on how we might inflate our position in the world, how the prized position is no guarantee of safety… 

Specifically mentioned: 

 David quoted The Span of Life” by Robert Frost:

The old dog barks backwards without getting up.

 I can remember when he was a pup.

 What a delightful image this barking backwards, as if a dog were reviewing his life-- this sense of unspooling his life, going back to the beginning... although it is the speaker of the poem providing the image, and doing the same.

From Bernie

: The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein 

The story of Enzo and the humans around him. 

from Marna: Dog-ku by Andrew Clements https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/books/dogku-by-andrew-clements/

I mentioned two more dog poems:  

Ted Kooser The way we Said Goodbye. https://poeticfool.com/2016/04/18/the-way-we-said-goodbye-by-ted-kooser-u-s-poet-laureate/

Emily had sent Fetch, by Tony Hoagland: https://www.writersalmanac.org/index.html%3Fp=7058.html

Maura suggested Dharma by Billy Collins http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/billy_collins/poems/11339

This is also a fun reading by Billy where he reads A Dog on His Master. and  The Revenant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOvbl3ZPPV4
John Adds his reading of the Lanyard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EjB7rB3sWc&feature=youtu.be

As for the RCA Victor* symbol, you might enjoy this angel about Nipper, the dog listening attentively into the gramophone.  https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-wrong-dog

Thank you Barb for the info about the dog who modeled for the  painter... 

*(RCA Records (originally The Victor Talking Machine Company, then RCA Victor) is one of the flagship labels of Sony Music Entertainment. The RCA initials stand forRadio Corporation of America (later renamed RCA Corporation), which was the parent corporation from 1929 to 1985 and a partner from 1985 to 1986.