Analysis of Dog Woman
It’s like flying in your dreams, she said. You empty
Yourself out and just lift off. Soar. It’s like that.
Red. Red. Red.
Just that word. Sometimes.
Yang & Yin. Like twins tumbling through summer.
He, the rooster crowing sun; desperate—afraid—
As only men can be.
And Yin? Let’s say she has long hair—
No, that won’t work. If we are to believe
the ancient Chinese, she was a dog
howling moon.
When I counted out the pills, it was a slowing down.
Like the delay between when the car goes through
the dip and your stomach falls away—
And won’t stop.
Of course it was because she didn’t fit my mold.
So I punished her. And why? And why? And why?
You did it, I said. You did it.
Wouldn’t fill my world.
And eventually we all kill our mothers.
Their eyes a tenderness that doesn’t flinch
from it. Knowing. Eventually.
What else is there?
Paula’s paintings are real. The women thick, visceral,
like stubborn cliffs the sea cannot contain—or drown.
Or dogs. And such as these drove Homer to despair—
And his cry: Oh to see! To see! To see!
So Paula says: To be a dog woman is bestial is good.
Eating, snarling.
Utterly believable.
Gross.
Like when Cesaria Evora breaks your heart with a smile
all melancholy and sea and salt.
Assim ’m ta pidi mar
Pa ’l leva ’me pa ’me ca voeta
And it doesn’t matter that you don’t know what
the words mean. Some things are beyond that.
So. Tanya bought the record because Cesaria’s face
is beautiful with all the lost love of the world
and darker than the blue of the sun setting over the Atlantic.
It’s in the angle of light washing her hair
with sun into a puddle that catches in the throat
The wood deck creaks from the weight
of all that air and sun and silence
Water chuckling in the tiny fountain in the corner
holding up the song of wind chimes and flies
And it’s all here. Fire. Water. Stone. Wood.
All caught up in Yeats and the cuckoo
that wasn’t a real bird but cried
with all the agony of the desire for flight
hemmed by wooden wings, and springs and cogs.
Or looking for Rilke—
How the panther is like the rage
of a doll’s soul caught in the body: but
to say: under an open window, a violin
Accomplishment though is another matter—
Just ask Baudelaire and so I
thought I could do it.
Necromancer, necromancer, necromancer
make me a mate
only one of my ribs pray take.
So why won’t women fit into that space?
Is that why in the photograph David plays
an inflatable lyre? Does his smile make it all artifice?
But life is this and it will not
be contained. The Igbo say:
No one can outrun their shadow.
And this is good. This is hope.
Because, or maybe, we cannot outrun love.
To drive down a road, she said. Until it stops
at the edge of the sea. An ocean vast and immense,
she said. If you are lucky, she said. It fills you.
Scheme | AB X C DXA EXFX GHIX XJKL XXA E MG EA NXMX XX XA OB PLX EX QXDX N HXXC FXOX DJK DQX P XX XIXXX XXH |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111001111110 01101111111 111 11101 1111100110 10101011001 110111 01111111 1111111101 010011101 101 1110101110101 10010110111 010110101 011 11110111111 11100010101 11111111 1111 0010001111010 110100111 111001000 1111 110110101100 110101100111 110111110101 0111111111 110111011011011 1010 1000100 1 1111111101 11000101 11111 111011111 0111011111 011111011 11010010111 110011011101 01010110110100010 10010111001 1101010110001 0111101 111101010 10100010100010 1010111101 0111101011 11101001 1101111 1101001001011 111010101 11011 10101101 1011100101 1110110100001 01001101010 111011 11111 100100100 1101 10111111 1111010111 1110010101 101001111111100 11110111 101011 1110111 0111111 01110110011 11101110111 1011011101001 111111011111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 3,792 |
Words | 545 |
Sentences | 67 |
Stanzas | 27 |
Stanza Lengths | 2, 1, 1, 3, 4, 4, 4, 3, 1, 2, 2, 4, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 4, 1, 4, 4, 3, 3, 1, 2, 5, 3 |
Lines Amount | 72 |
Letters per line (avg) | 29 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 79 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 21 |
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"Dog Woman" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 12 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/108283/dog-woman>.
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