Monique Ahmad

Joseph Cooper

Intro. to CRWR

6 April 2014

Analysis Black Dog Songs

Black Dog Songs is a collection of poems that discusses the struggles relating to racial issues in mainly the United States as well as the rest of the world. Lisa Jarnot uses various literary elements to create a diversity in her book. Jarnot splits the book up into four sections to separate poems with differing themes.

When it comes to stanzas, Jarnot has 3 types of poems: one containing stanzas with symmetrical lines, stanzas with an irregular number of lines, and poems with one large stanza. Very few of the poems in Black God Songs have a completely structured form, but some do. We see a use of Tercet, quatrain, and other types of stanzas.  Many poems throughout this book have a few stanzas that have the same number of lines, but the last stanza has either an extra or is missing a line.  In her first and last sections, “My Terrorist Notebook” and “They, Jarnot mainly uses one large stanza to express her entire thought. I believe she does this because she wants this section to be bold to allow the meaning of these poems to be enhanced. These poems try to give a more holistic meaning rather than telling various aspects of a story. Jarnot does well with showing a variety of styles of stanzas in her book.

Throughout the book Jarnot uses similar patterns in her writing such as repetition of particular words, and alliteration.  In “Silentiarius,” Jarnot uses repetition of the word “lettuce” (5). This is done in most of the book. Jarnot uses repetition to create a connection throughout the poem and the book.  Though we do not see a use of rhyme or a concrete form in her poetry, Jarnot uses similar sounds to create flow throughout the poem . In her poem to Dick Cheney called “Dume Duke Death,” we see a constant use of alliteration. Throughout this entire poem, we see a continuous use of the letter “D.”

Personally I did not enjoy most of the pieces in this book. I found most of them to be difficult to understand. I could see that their was a deeper meaning in all of them, but I was not able to figure out what it exactly was. I did think it was fun to read because of its free form.