National Poetry Month: “Homer’s Seeing-Eye Dog”
April 16th, 2007 by Matt
Editor’s note: This is the third in our series of posts celebrating National Poetry Month. For an explanation, click this sentence. To read the first poem, click this sentence. To read last week’s poem, click this sentence.
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When I was an undergraduate English major at SUNY Geneseo, I started writing poetry, and I was transformed by the work of William Matthews. My junior year, I started working for the campus newspaper, The Lamron, and shortly after, National Poetry Month rolled around. I successfully pitched a series of articles highlighting poets I loved.
I did a little Internet hunting, and dug up the office phone number for Matthews. I hemmed and hawed about dialing, and I foolishly decided to focus instead on reading the crap I was assigned — The Last of the Mohicans, the poetry of H.D., and Shakespeare’s Henry V. (Yes, some of Shakespeare’s plays are like flaming piles of rhino dung left on the doorsteps of our minds. Sorry, I think that simile got away from me a bit.)
So I never called him that April. William Matthews died seven months later.
But, thank goodness, his work lives on. You can find a lot of his verse on the Internet, including the entire collection Rising and Falling. I won’t bother writing a brief bio of Matthews, other than to say he wrote 11 books of poems, all of which I recommend. If you only read one, check out Blues If You Want.
Below you’ll find one of my favorite poems, a seemingly “lite” dramatic monologue, a poem that closes with wisdom that I try to rely on more often than not. Enjoy.
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Most of the time he worked, a sort of sleep
with a purpose, so far as I could tell.
How he got from the dark of sleep
to the dark of waking up I’ll never know;
the lax sprawl sleep allowed him
began to set from the edges in,
like a custard, and then he was awake,
me too, of course, wriggling my ears
while he unlocked his bladder and stream
of dopey wake-up jokes. The one
about the wine-dark pee I hated instantly.
I stood at the ready, like a god
in an epic, but there was never much
to do. Oh now and then I’d make a sure
intervention, save a life, whatever.
But my exploits don’t interest you
and of his life all I can say is that
when he’d poured out his work
the best of it was gone and then he died.
He was a great man and I loved him.
Not a whimper about his sex life –
how I detest your prurience –
but here’s a farewell literary tip:
I myself am the model for Penelope.
Don’t snicker, you hairless moron,
I know so well what faithful means
there’s not even a word for it in Dog,
I just embody it. I think you bipeds
have a catchphrase for it: “To thine own self
be true, . . .” though like a blind man’s shadow,
the second half is only there for those who know
it’s missing. Merely a dog, I’ll tell you
what it is: ” . . . as if you had a choice.”
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