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“Biscuit” by Jane Kenyon
The dog has cleaned his bowl
and his reward is a biscuit,
which I put in his mouth
like a priest offering the host.
I can’t bear that trusting face!
He asks for bread, expects
bread, and I in my power
might have given him a stone.
(from Otherwise: New and Selected Poems, 1996)
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One more diversion
He asks for bread, expects
bread, and I in my power
I’ll admit, I’m no poet. Just a cynic.
So perhaps some of the artsy folk can explain to me why “bread” is on the next line. Because right now I’m left thinking that the poet did it for no good reason other than for us to be impressed by her arrangement. As if it has some greater meaning sitting on that lower line.
Hogwash.
I like the writing, as writing; the simile regards the priest is nice; the stone thought is interesting.
I’m with Graceland on the line break in question. The poet tries to force uniformity in line numbers (4 per stanza) at the risk of causing a sort of flow-wreck in the mind of the reader.
Would it not maybe work better to organize it as
I can’t bear that trusting face!
He asks for bread,
Expects bread,
And I
In my power
Might have given him a stone.
Or something like that. But heck its the writers choice, not mine.
Ahh…poetry by Drill makes much more sense.
Okay, okay, I get it.
The first line’s ending in “expects” is probably designed to create expectation…what is he expecting? Bread, we learn. Oh. He asks for bread and expects it. He’s trusting, maybe even naive. Just like the congregant who gets the wafer from the priest.
And that, Harrison, is what I don’t like.
You can put gibberish down on paper, and if the reader thinks about it long enough, he can come to some sort of interpretation that sounds brilliant.
OK, I’ll stop now. Thanks for the enlightenment.
Great poem to kick off Poetry Month (yes! it’s April!)
About the line break, I think that it’s in part a meter question. She’s not doing free verse. That iambic foot (de-DAH) of “expects” closes the line but also keeps the dog’s sensibility intact (he asks… expects), the next line shifts the thought back to the narrator, no longer just responding to the dog, but recognizing her power.
The stone at the end is also a nice opening up of the poem — the dog becomes a stand-in for a child (as dogs often are), and indirectly to all who are in some way dependent on us.
And since it’s poetry month, how about something from Kenyon’s husband, Donald Hall? One of his grieving poems (Without), or part of “The Day I Was Older?”
Drill,
Can you hear the difference between Kenyon’s second “bread” and yours?
Line breaks don’t always function like brakes; they’ve got gravity and our habit of reading top-to-bottom working in their favor so that in this case, by our being pulled through the stanza, the last three lines seem to draw out a continuous thought.
Appreciate the explanations but it still sounds strangely forced in that place, to me.
SG: Well, I guess the difference in emphasis is between ‘expects’ and ‘bread’, depending on which is first word of a line? Is that what you mean?
If I take a first couple lines of a poem I wrote as
Once
I knew her
As Queen
Of Air and Darkness.
That sounds better to me than something like
Once I knew
Her as
Queen of Air and
Darkness.
I guess it is all subjective and hence is utterly personal.
GRACELAND,
Clearly, you have some serious personal problems with poetry, yet feel compelled enough by it - angered, even - to comment. Keep talking. We’re here for you.
DRILL,
You appear to have the same personal problems as Graceland, but are dealing with yours in a different way. Remember, the first step is ADMITTING YOU HAVE A PROBLEM. Come on, we’re here for you, too.
Harrison,
Yes, you’ve hit the nail on
the head. I am angered.
Poems should be easy to
read
with natural pauses. Not
the unnatural variety
. And thanks for being here
for me. It means a lot.
But if I continue in this dis
cussion regarding poetry I
will probably say something stup
id or start mocking the form of
expression all
togeth
e
r
.
Heck.. I’m having more fun reading the comments than the poem…
Keep it up. You’re here for me…
Hi Harrison:
Yes, I admitted that I had a problem in #2. You should be quite proud of me, at least for that.
With Boundless Love and Great Admiration, Always Your Humble and Obediant Servant, Etc & Etc, Ad Nauseum,
Drill
PS: I could send you some of my own epic poetry but I don’t want to be involved in any lawsuits with your widow.
Doxies are real dumb dogs, probably the most stupid but they are smarter than this dog that somehow asks for and then expects bread.
My dumb doxie dog never asks for bread, like this genius dog apparently does. She wants meat and any bread heading her way better be a sandwich with some luncheon meat tucked inside or she will take off your finger which to her is as good as any meat.
She does ask for water though by pushing her metal water bowl across the floor with her long snout and then, looking you square in the eye, saying “Get me some water right now or I am going to keep pushing this bowl around the kitchen until you get my drift you fool - don’t make me ask twice to prove how stupid you are.”
But she has never asked for bread. When she starts asking for bread, I’m going to let the cat eat her for sport
Drill,
Pay no attention to them. You are right. I know it is nearly impossible to fix this, what some call poetry, but your fix to their horrible effort does flow better and make more sence than a stupid dog who asks for bread.
But, you can write and have an advantage since they obviously cannot and who are doubly stuck with a worthless dog not even a cat would eat
DRILL,
Pay no attention to LLAMA, who should be fed to the dog along with the bread. He is the great tempter, leading you astray. Fear not.
Llama,
I wish my dog would ask for food or water by pushing his bowl, standing near it and making noises, or something that says “please give me food/water.” Instead he follows me all over the house, sticks his head under my hand, and generally shows that he wants attention. He does the same when he wants to go outside. Of course he also does the same when he simply wants to be petted. He just does it more when he wants his dish filled or to go out. I think a crying baby is easier to understand than this dog.
But he’s a very nice dog. Golden retriever/cocker spaniel mix. By far the nicest dog we’ve had (previous dogs were lab, shelties, and a collie/sheltie mix). Just hard to figure out why he follows me around so much, other than the fact that - as my husband says - he thinks I’m god.
Thanks Llama: But there IS more to this poem than I first saw (putting aside the contentious structural issues over which Harrison will shortly lose his temper, if I don’t shut up about it).
The poem is a sort of earthy picture of the entire God-human relationship, perhaps?
The dog symbolizes humanity.
The narrator, God.
The cleaning of the bowl is presumably upright living, the action of rooting out the undesirable, becoming holified, that sort of thing.
The biscuit represents That Which is Given.
God could give us stones, but He doesn’t.
He gives us biscuits.
And we humans ALWAYS expect biscuits, not stones.
But sometimes God THINKS about giving us stones, as a sort of stern reminder about who is in charge.
But if we trust in Him (a.k. the trusting face), He will always give us biscuits.
That does not fit MY personal theology, but I know some people of a more strictly Calvinist bent that might agree with it, kind of.
As an aside my dogs, however, definitely don’t think like this dog either, Llama. When I am getting a dog biscuit out of the box, they generally try to kill me in order to get at the entire box; there is none of this ‘trusting face’ stuff.
Perhaps I did not raise them right.
Perhaps I should read this poem to them and then gently remonstrate to them about behavioral issues. I have never tried poetry with them.
Poetry should calm them, seeing as how poetry is so non-controversial.
Make it Man - I echo your comments today. This is hilarious.
Also I think it’s probably the most popular (based on number of comments) poetry thread we’ve had here on WMB.
Drill, do you believe that God sometimes thinks about giving us stones?
LLAMA,
Something a friend sent me yesterday, wondering if it would be considered poetry by a llama?
The LLAMA Song
here’s a llama
there’s a llama
and another little llama
fuzzy llama
funny llama
llama llama
duck
llama llama
cheesecake
llama
tablet
brick
potato
llama
llama llama
mushroom
llama
llama llama
duck
i was once a treehouse
i lived in a cake
but i never saw the way
the orange slayed the rake
i was only three years dead
but it told a tale
and now listen, little child
to the safety rail
did you ever see a llama
kiss a llama
on the llama
llama’s llama
tastes of llama
llama llama
duck
half a llama
twice the llama
not a llama
farmer
llama
llama in a car
alarm a llama
llama
duck
is THIS how it’s told now?
is it all so old?
is it made of lemon juice?
doorknob
ankle
cold
now my song is getting thin
i’ve run out of luck
time for me to retire now
and become a duck
My dogs don’t ask me for bread. They want anything I’m eating myself or will hand out to them, especially the old sick 14 year old dog. She may find herself in the hereafter when she’s in other rooms of the house, but she definitely knows she’s hereafter some food if she’s in the kitchen.
Drill have you tried watching The Dog Whisperer with your dogs?
I always try to get my dogs to pay attention when he’s on the TV. He makes his dogs be calm and submissive before they get their treats, and he has a whole pack of them. Mine have a hard time with that calm and submissive attitude when I come home from somewhere and when treats are being handed out.
Although poetry might make them calm and submissive…
I just cleaned off my desk,
and my reward is the poem
that Jane placed here on the page
like an unspoiled egg
It’ll have to bear my trust!
I asked for a bird, expect
a bird, and she in her power
could have written me a scorpion,
hard, venomous, and ugly jointed with
forced line
breaks for no
reason in particular.
This is deteriorating quickly.
Drill,
I think poetry would be poison to dogs and kill them like chocolate. I know it makes llamas sick as all get out and we are closer to dogs than one might suspect.
Thomas,
Don’t go all ducky on us man. Once you go duck they throw you in prison pretty fast afterwards. Just type in Sounds That Llamas Make into Google and you can go to a website and listen to real llama songs. We can orgle a beautiful serenade and then, for a slight extra charge, stomp the listener to death so the last thing they remember is the best thing they ever heard. No one has ever complained afterwards.
Your poetry, even if weird in a strangely putrid way, is better than most of the stuff I suffer through from HSK every Friday. At least you have decent subject matter !
Pauline,
When my Doxie wants attention she flops herself right on her back four paws in the air and wants her tummy rubbed pronto and will growl at you till you do. We always make her growl before we comply. She usually falls asleep that way too. She sleeps at least 16 hours a day. What a life.
For some reason, when I am home and the wife gets too near me, the Doxie jumps up and bites her right on the nose which really upsets my wife to no end. It cracks me up which also upsets my wife even more. I feel dogs, even dumb ones, have a natural inherent feeling about people that shouldn’t be overlooked. At least that is what I tell my wife.
Llama,
It sounds like doxies are dominant over llamas in your house. My collie has occasionally told me she wants to be head of the household right now, thank you. And when she does, she gets to lie down for a few minutes to have time to ponder the fact that life doesn’t work that way in this household.
Since lying down is a submissive posture for dogs, I have found that, for her at least, that is the quickest, easiest way to respond to hints of rebellion. I firmly make her lie down, and then I walk away and ignore her for a few minutes. When I let her get up again, she happily remembers which one of us is alpha. If she shoves ahead of me through a doorway, she gets recalled and told to wait while I walk through. If she ever decided who I could or couldn’t hug, she would be lying down for a good long while. (When she was younger and we were just starting to reinforce lying down on command, she would lie down with a “grumble.” It sounded a bit like a growl, but was more musical–up and down the scale, a very obvious complaint that she didn’t really want to lie down right now, and she’d lie down very slowly as she complained. It was humorous, and I did sometimes laugh, but she wasn’t allowed to disobey anyway. Now she usually lies down quickly when I tell her to, as though the command itself reminds her that I’m boss.)
VS: I don’t think God gives us stones when we don’t need them. I guess some things we might THINK are stones (even to the point of resenting God) are actually blessings, even if we can’t see how that is right away.
Some things are hard to imagine as anything but stones, though. I really don’t know how God thinks - I guess I should be more careful; I know He loves, that we can understand, or at least approach a measure of understanding, as much as the finite can understand the infinite.
I wish someone was here to give my dog a bath. She rolled in something long dead; but not so long that whatever it was has ceased the smell of its demise. She has been bathed three times in five days and if sent out for more time than it takes her to do her business she goes and finds the offending carcass again. Her name is Surely; because she showed up on our step 12 years ago and we thought “surely somebody else wants her”. Nobody did so we still have her.
When we lived on the farm she lived outside and it didn’t matter if she smelled dead. But she doesn’t like the wind and cold where we live now so she spends most of her retirement inside. Now it does matter and it is not good for her to smell dead in the house. When she comes in smelling dead and we scold her, she repents, we forgive her, we bathe her until she doesn’t smell dead anymore and all is well until she falls into sin again. Then it starts over.