Alexandra,
Your poem is the best I’ve read in a long while. Usually, a notoriously well-crafted poem may be strong and quite visual, and felt, but this one goes beyond that with intuition. And there’s more.
Because the dog made me think of one of Lorca’s poems, in which there is ‘the Assyrian dog’. In that poem, they are trying to wake up someone so that he can hear the Assyrian dog barking. This took me to search about Lorca’s Assyrian dog. I ran into something new to me: dogs used to be considered more than guards and companions—they were healers, since it was known that dogs’ saliva possesses healing qualities. There is yet another poem of Lorca’s that mentions dogs (and now I understand it better) a child crying so much that they had to call in the dogs to get him to quiet down. In any case, I much prefer the mad dog and the way it comes through, to the more controlled expression in the revision, where I feel it loses attention, while I’d like to see him a little closer.
If your poem were a painting, the only expert I know would say that the dog is the out of the wall thing that is sheer inspiration. But we know better than that now! I usually don’t feel this way about dogs howling in poems, but I feel strongly in favor in this case.
Thank you for this masterpiece.
Your poem will continue to take me to places I haven’t visited before.
It will also be the pause to think of you and wish you well.
~mignon
https://www.worldhistory.org/article...e-nimrud-dogs/
Mark, Joshua J.. "The Nimrud Dogs." World History Encyclopedia. Last modified January 12, 2017.
https://www.worldhistory.org/article...e-nimrud-dogs/.
Joshua J. Mark
Joshua J. Mark is World History Encyclopedia's co-founder and Content Director.
In 612 BCE the Neo-Assyrian Empire
Gula, goddess of healing, was closely associated with dogs because of the curative effect of their saliva. People noticed that when a dog was injured it would lick itself to heal; dog saliva was considered an important medicinal substance and the dog a gift of the gods. The dog, in fact, became a symbol of Gula from the Old Babylonian Period (c. 2000-1600 BCE) onward.