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So Much Depends upon a Dog
So much depends upon a dog
The earth revolves around the sun.
Each day revolves around our jog—
unclip your harness, watch you run,
and sniff where other dogs have wet.
So much depends upon a dog.
Across the sky, the tempests jet
and leave behind the fallen log.
Beneath your paws, the spongy bog
emits a squish at every step.
So much depends upon a dog
The puddles pond. I snatch and schlep
you home to dry and teach a truth—
our friendship forms a crucial cog.
We turn together, tooth to tooth.
So much depends upon a dog.
.
.
André Le Mont Wilson was born in Los Angeles to parents who were poets. He is the 2022 Newfound Prose Prize Winner for his chapbook Hauntings. He has published rhymed and metered poetry in The Society of Classical Poets, Rattle, and Isele Magazine. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, teaching poetry and storytelling to adults with disabilities.
Wow Andre, this is great. There is a theory over here that every dog is born with the wrong backside and spends the rest of his life looking for the right one.
Hope your mutt appreciates the effort you took to pen this.
Yes, Jeff, the lines to this poem came to me when I walked my Chihuahua named Mina during a series of storms. I recited lines to her to test them out and rehearse.
Andre, as a dog lover myself, I really enjoyed this clever poem. I’m very intrigued by the form you used and its “So much depends upon a dog” repetend which creeps into a successive line in each stanza. Is this a nonce form that you’ve created or a form I’m just not familiar with? And kudos for organically slipping the word “schlep” into a classical poem!
The form is called a viator: https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/viator-poetic-forms
André: Brian has already covered most of what I was going to say. Plus, I like the nod to the Williams poem mentioned by Joseph Salemi.
Hi, Brian;
The form I used is a quatern. It has a refrain that shifts a line in each of the four stanzas so that the first line of the first stanza becomes the last line in the last.
https://poetscollective.org/poetryforms/quatern/
I’ve previously written unmetered quaterns but wanted to challenge myself by writing one in tetrameter. Because I needed a word that rhymed with “step,” I chose an exciting, fun, and rare word: “schlep.”
Thank you for your compliments on my poem.
I agree with Brian. “Schlep” has to be a first.
I hope people recognize that this poem is a partial parody of W.C. Williams’ well-known imagistic squib:
So much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
Yes, Joseph, you are partially correct about my poem echoing a previous poem. My original inspiration was not William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow” but an unmetered poem I wrote six years ago titled “Homecoming,” describing my Chihuahua Mina’s first trip back to her homeland Mexico. That poem had these lines:
Much depends on me always watching
Upon the streets, folks smile and greet
This January, I thought I could improve upon the poem by writing it as a quatern in tetrameter. I salvaged little from the previous poem, but that fragment became the “So much depends upon a dog” refrain in the new poem. The line sounded familiar to me. When I Googled it, I found that WCW had written, “So much depends/upon/a red wheel/barrow.” Faced with the dilemma that people will likely think I am parodying or copying WCW but finding no other tetrameter line would work, I decided to keep my line to structure the whole poem. I don’t think my poem would have been any good had I set out to deliberately parody WCW because it would have changed the tone and intention. I wanted to convey the special relationship dogs have with people and how our lives fit together like cogs. The closest tonal quality I wanted to convey is Minkyu Lee’s 2011 Oscar-nominated animated short “Adam and Dog,” which retells the creation story of the Garden of Eden from the point of view of the first Dog. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFTWjVAMmiQ
Literary reminiscences happen frequently in poems written in languages that have a huge canon of texts behind them. Greek writers couldn’t help echoing lines in the Iliad or the Odyssey; Roman writers couldn’t help echoing Vergil; and even Shakespearean echoes intrude into the poetry of later English writers. You’re in good company!
I’m a cat person, and you’ve almost convinced me otherwise, Andre…. almost!
Thanks for a fine tribute to man’s-best-friend.
Paul, you are most welcome. I wish I had written a cat tribute poem when cats owned me!
What a great picture!
Joshua, the form I used is a quatern, which is quite similar to a viator because it has that shifting refrain.
https://poetscollective.org/poetryforms/quatern/
I may want to try my hand at a viator and buy Poetic Forms!
Similarly, I want to try my hand at a quatern! Thank you for introducing us to the form. But I don’t know if the Poetic Forms book has any information the website doesn’t have.
Hi, Joshua,
You’re welcome. I’m glad I introduced this form. I tried it because I needed to write a poem that contained sixteen lines, instead of fourteen, like a sonnet. I Googled and found the quatern. Enjoy!