Analysis of Black Dog Songs

Claire Lenore Smithers

Joseph Cooper

CRWR 212

April 8^th, 2014

Analysis of Black Dog Songs

            Within Lisa Jarnot’s collection of radically free-formed poems, there are several literary devices used to structure the collection and imply allegorical and symbolical meanings. These poems are extremely political and show radical viewpoints by using unusual viewpoints and tactics on heavy subjects. Jarnot uses the power of words and repetition of phrases to underline these political stances.

            An example of Jarnot’s use of free form is exemplified on page 8 with her piece entitled “The History of Western Still Life”. Many of the pieces are varying in form, but this piece is in one stanza with no capitalization, as most of them are, and has no punctuation. This free form is emphasizes the flowing free form of the piece, which helps strengthen the theme of freedom throughout the entire collection.

            Jarnot uses allegory throughout this collection of pieces to describe her political stance of terrorism and her negative opinion of the president of the United States at the time, George W. Bush. The author uses a cave as an allegory, which could be a reference of Allegory of the Cave, which is a theoretical philosophical allegory written by Plato. Jarnot uses the cave as a symbol of innocence in her reference to Adam, most likely from the biblical creation myth in the book of Genesis. This innocent, isolated location from the world is represented as a symbol for how Americans are shielded in a safe darkness, away from the realities of the injustices of this country.

            Another way in which the author creates her satirical political message is by using stream of consciousness. This was a very interesting device used to create an unbroken flowing thread of words to prove a point. This device is used throughout the section called “They”. In this section, “they” refers to the American people. Lisa Jarnot criticizes common American stereotypes by using stream of consciousness. An example of this can be seen in the piece called “They Loved” on page 28.

            Many of Jarnot’s pieces have a cadence quality to them which is mainly due to her careful use of assonance. A quintessential example of the clever assonance is on page 37 in a piece called “Gang Angles”. Even within the title, assonance can be seen, along with words like green/deer, seed/eden, deer/gear, etc. This carefully chosen diction creates a bouncy sort of flow to the piece which connects one image to another, both in sound and meaning.

            The final piece that Jarnot puts in this collection is titled “Black Dog Song”. While this is also another allegory, Jarnot experiments with rhythm by pairing stressed and unstressed syllables in unique patterns to create a song-like rhythm to the piece. This piece surrounds the concept of the familiarity of a dog which is used as a symbol of family.