After discussing the poem A Dog Sleeping On My Feet in class I had a new found appreciation for the poem. I really liked how Dickey started off the poem by being literal- the author was sitting in his chair beginning to write a poem, with his faithful companion sleeping on his feet. This was such a cute image. For some reason I imaged an old man with gray hair sitting in his easy chair with a fire and just relaxing with his dog that he's had for quite a while. The poem starts out very simple, and straight forward, there is nothing confusing and is just exactly what the author says. Then the tone changes, and us as readers go into the dogs mind. I never would have thought to take an approach like that when writing poetry, and I think that's the reason why I was so confused when I tried to get through this poem the first time.
At the point when the dog is supposedly taking over the poem, the reader feels rushed and very excited. That is exactly how most dogs are, especially if they are getting ready to go outside and hunt or something like that.
When the author comes back into the front of the poem its like his whole body is being taken over by writing the poem, not just his mind. The line that I feel shows this is: " My hand, which speaks in a daze The hypnotized language of beast." To me this shows that the author was actually imaging that he was a dog, or that he was following a dog in the woods, something like that.
In my notes I had written down: "Poems are instinctive, the hound represents the author while the fox represents the words and the thoughts." I'm not sure if I came up with that or if someone said it in class- but that sums up this poem for me.
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I agree that I found this poem much more interesting after we had discussed it in class. When I first read I think I had been trying to read way too much into it, to the point where I had no idea what Dickey was trying to say. But in this poem Dickey's words say exactly what he is thinking. I found the tone changes in this poem to be very interesting. In the beginning, the poem is very calm and soothing, the man is just writing and his dog is sleeping on his feet. But then once the dreaming starts and the old man is sharing his dogs dreams, the tone picks up and is more fast-paced with excitement as the dog is chasing something. Once the dream ends the tone circles back to the calm and soothing tone that was used in the beginning.
I liked this poem too, at first i liked the idea that he was using the dog as a muse, or just an escape and imagining what was really going on in his dreams. But then, when we described it in class as it being the process of writing a poem, made a lot of sense but also made it seem more ingenious. who would think to describe the process of writing a poem as to relate it to a dogs dream and getting sucked up into this uncontrolable experience that just takes his whole body over. I really liked this, it was imaginative, clever and entertaining. He does a good job at not only glorifying this experience but making it sound much more exciting than i would think it is. This poem gives poetry a life, it makes it seem more human and actually have a personality.
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