[Deborah Warren]

Jake

Although Jake may resemble an ordinary hound,
the ideas in his caninish brain are profound.
He’s versed in all principles quantum mechanical,
delights in the odors of all things botanical,

clued in to the canine affairs round the burbs,
and so clever, he knows not to step off of curbs.
What’s more, he is hip to the orbital path
of the moon round the earth. He knows physics and math,

the elaborate theories of Einstein and Newton,
enjoys baby carrots, baked tofu and gluten,
but like most dogs will chase any feline that stalks
round the alleys, and relishes everyday walks.

And yet he has memorized “Fire and Ice”
and has even prepared his own chicken fried rice.
But today his abilities truly stood out
when he spotted, then rolled on, a stinky dead trout.

[Deborah Warren]

Felicitous rhymes! Especially the Gilbert & Sullivan-esqerie of lines 3 and 4 and Newton/gluten. (Though I can’t quite scan the first line.)

I wish the progression ad absurdum were stricter—for example, I’d prefer the botanical, burbs, curbs, gluten and stalks lines all to precede the quantum mechanics and orbital paths, rather than going back and forth between actual and kooky. Listing the dog’s intellectual prowesses in ascending order would build even better to the final couplet.

Speaking of the end, ‘stinky’ is too cute. Same with italicizing ‘truly’. On the other hand, I really do groove on ‘hip to the orbital path’.

[Catherine Chandler]

Yes, the rhymes are pretty cool, but the rest of the poem is a dud, IMHO. Maybe Jake (who is so very intelligent!) can teach his master (or mistress) something about metrics .

[Roger Slater]

Fun poem. I remember the poem and the poet from the Spectator thread where the challenge was to write poems for Eliot's Book of Practical Dogs. I do like this one quite a bit, though the same poet, as I recall, produced a large number of wonderful and amusing dog poems for that competition. I think some of his others were even better.

Yes, "hip to the orbital path" is the standout phrase in this poem.

There are a few spots where things could be smoothed out a bit. For example, these lines:

Although Jake may resemble an ordinary hound,
the ideas in his caninish brain are profound.
He’s versed in all principles quantum mechanical,
delights in the odors of all things botanical,

clued in to the canine affairs round the burbs,
and so clever, he knows not to step off of curbs.

For reasons of grammar/syntax, I'd reverse the order the the last two couplets:

Although Jake may resemble an ordinary hound,
the ideas in his caninish brain are profound.
Clued in to the canine affairs round the burbs,
and so clever, he knows not to step off of curbs,

he’s versed in all principles quantum mechanical,
delights in the odors of all things botanical ...

While I enjoyed the Newton/gluten rhyme, I'm not sure why liking tofu and gluten is a sign of brain power rather than a sophisticated palate.

My biggest problem with the poem is L11-12. It is too soon at that point to tell us how Jake is like an ordinary dog who likes to chase cats, etc., only to tell us in the next line that he memorizes Frost poems. Doing so undercuts the punchline where Jake is at last revealed as a plain old fun-loving dog rolling on a stinky trout. In L11-12, I'd prefer to see another astonishingly unlikely sign of Jake's sophistication. Let him yowl arias from Puccini, for example. Wait until the last line to show him, for all his talents, as just another lovable mutt.

But well done overall.

[Orwn Acra]

The pseudo-sophisto menagerie continues with dogs replacing bears. The Gilbertian rhymes ("botanical/mechanical") are pulled back by the decidedly un-Gilbertian meter (less dipodic, more herky-jerky). Deborah's suggestion that Jake's talents should be ordered from weird to weirder is a good one. Roger's suggestion that the ending is spoiled (like that dead trout) by the previous cat-chase line is also good. "Stinky" might be kitsch but it possibly-maybe-almost works. Overall, it's fun but could use some tweaking.

Physics and dogs? The clues point to only one man.

[Rick Mullin]

And that man is Thomas Pynchon.

I'm going to give this poem a "fmeh". Light verse is supposed to be funny. Being delightful isn't enough. Nor is being about a dog.

RM

[Petra Norr]

A little criticism first:
Anapestic meter is very infectious, and it's very easy to force the meter onto lines in a way that you can't do with iambic meter. But it never sounds as good as it could when it's forced. I think the meter has problems in S3.
In the first stanza, the word "things" is demoted in an anapestic foot; and in the second stanza, there's a demotion in the anapest "round the earth", namely the word "round"; and both demotions are okay, in my view, since we've picked up the meter from the start of the poem and can accept a couple demotions to create anapestic feet. But in S3, there are suddenly too many demotions of that kind. And it looks and sounds "flawed"; in other words, it doesn't look like an intentionally created metrical pattern. It's simply flawed craftsmanship, in my view.

Praise: Yes, it's a fun poem, and I like it. Very good details, and I really like how the dog memorized Frost. Chuckles all around from me. At first I felt I might have liked a more powerful or humorous a punch at the end, but I quickly changed my mind; I like the trout, and the real show of dogginess in Jake.

[Maryann Corbett]

I'm a grump, and I'm put off by a first line that doesn't set me up immediately in the anapestic pattern. That first line needs to start with "Though" lest we stress the second syllable of "although" and start out wrong-footed. And it needs a real three-syllable word where "ordinary" is, which is a full four syllables for me.

I'm also put off by a failure to attend to the join between line ends and starts, the failure to preserve clean anapestic rhythm at those junctures. For me, dactylic and anapestic meters are pretty unforgiving.

It's quite possible that I'm a pessimist about this poem because I'm not a dog lover. Someday we should have a full discussion about whether one really can separate one's reaction to the subject from one's analysis of the poem's craft. I think light verse might be especially subject to our trouble in sorting them out.

[Janice D. Soderling]

I was sure I knew the author until Rick threw out "And that man is Thomas Pynchon." I didn't even know T.P. was a member.

There are some nice moments here, but some bloopers too. Methinks the poet should have been a little more critical. But what do I know, it passed the scrunity of Mike Cantor and Deborah Warren, both of whom are more metrically adept than I.

[Jayne Osborn]

Physics and dogs? The clues point to only one man.

Yes, the author seems pretty obvious to me too (but not Thomas Pynchon).

I have a couple of nits:
If Jake is able to cope with quantum mechanics I'm surprised that he's merely
clued in to the canine affairs round the burbs,

and not, say, clued into the housewives' affairs round the burbs.
It's a real let-down to find he knows only doggy stuff that's going on in the neighbourhood. It also jarred a little to have 'canine' so soon again anyway, after the wonderful 'caninish'.

And I'm very sorry but WHO in the world says 'burbs'? It's absolutely awful - and should, at the very least, be 'burbs, presumably short for 'suburbs'. I truly hate that word, finding it contrived to rhyme with 'curbs'. (In the UK they're 'kerbs'; we tend to use 'curb' as a verb, but that's not a criticism of the poem.) Whilst still on that line, I don't like 'off of curbs', which I would correct a child for using! Just 'off the curbs' would have done.

Other than those things I like the poem and the title. Nice name for a dog.