Animals

In this session of Poem-Pairs we look at animals, not with the typical "aww" response elicited by certain species in a zoo or on National Geographic specials. Instead, we consider our more instinctual responses. 

In "The Oldest Living Thing in L.A. ," Larry Levis gives us an opossum (one of those "aww" animals) trying to cross a busy thoroughfare in Los Angeles. As soon as people try to help it,

    . . . It would lift its black lips & show them
    The reddened gums, the long rows of incisors,
    Teeth that went all the way back beyond
    The flames of Troy & Carthage . . . 

Yet the opossum

    . . . would back away
    Delicately & smoothly, stepping carefully
    As it always had. It could mangle someone’s hand
    In twenty seconds. Mangle it for good. It could
    Sever it completely from the wrist in forty.

Some onlooker would probably call

    . . . Animal Control, who woke a driver, who
    Then dressed in mailed gloves . . . someone who hoped
    The thing would have vanished by the time he got there. 

Note how Levis' choice of details underscores the more menacing aspects of what we might take to be a benign animal.

Similar to the appearance of the Animal Control person in the Levis poem, Stephen Dunn's "The Sudden Light and the Trees" tells us how the speaker once called the Humane Society about a neighbor's dog. The menacing element here is not the dog, but rather that neighbor:

    My neighbor was a biker, a pusher, a dog
        and a wife beater.
    In bad dreams I killed him

    and once, in the consequential light of day,

        I called the Humane Society
    about Blue, his dog. They took her away

    and I readied myself, a baseball bat

        inside my door.
    That night I heard his wife scream . . .

What about those cantilevered three-line stanzas? How do they heighten suspense by breaking the narrative into phrases that underscore the emotional tension within the poem?

Once again, there is an animal -- this time, a sparrow caught in a basement -- which generates the central conflict in the poem. Unlike Levis's armored Animal Control person, the speaker manages to trap the bird and release it:

    . . . I remember how it felt

     when I got it in my hand, and how it burst

         that hand open
    when I took it outside . . . 

But also recalled is the neighbor's reaction to the speaker's action:

    . . . And I remember

    the way he slapped the gun against

        his open palm,
    kept slapping it, and wouldn’t speak.

One might ask: who is the real animal here -- the sparrow or the neighbor?

        The Oldest Living Thing in L.A.  (Larry Levis) 

At Wilshire and Santa Monica I saw an opossum

Trying to cross the street. It was late, the street
Was brightly lit, the opossum would take
A few steps forward, then back away from the breath
Of moving traffic. People coming out of the bars
Would approach, as if to help it somehow.
It would lift its black lips & show them
The reddened gums, the long rows of incisors,
Teeth that went all the way back beyond
The flames of Troy & Carthage, beyond sheep
Grazing rock-strewn hills, fragments of ruins
In the grass at San Vitale. It would back away
Delicately & smoothly, stepping carefully
As it always had. It could mangle someone’s hand
In twenty seconds. Mangle it for good. It could
Sever it completely from the wrist in forty.
There was nothing to be done for it. Someone
Or other probably called the LAPD, who then
Called Animal Control, who woke a driver, who
Then dressed in mailed gloves, the kind of thing
Small knights once wore into battle, who gathered
Together his pole with a noose at the end,
A light steel net to snare it with, someone who hoped
The thing would have vanished by the time he got there.


    (from Elegy, page 7: University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA©1997)

     The Sudden Light and the Trees (Stephen Dunn)

                                   Syracuse, 1969

 My neighbor was a biker, a pusher, a dog

    and a wife beater.
In bad dreams I killed him

and once, in the consequential light of day,

    I called the Humane Society
about Blue, his dog. They took her away

and I readied myself, a baseball bat

    inside my door.
That night I heard his wife scream

and I couldn’t help it, that pathetic
    relief; her again, not me.
It would be years before I’d understand

why victims cling and forgive. I plugged in

    the Sleep-Sound and it crashed
like the ocean all the way to sleep.

One afternoon I found him

    on the stoop,
a pistol in his hand, waiting,

he said, for me. A sparrow had gotten in

    to our common basement.
Could he have permission

to shoot it? The bullets, he explained,

    might go through the floor.
I said I’d catch it, wait, give me

a few minutes and, clear-eyed, brilliantly

    afraid, I trapped it
with a pillow. I remember how it felt
 
when I got it in my hand, and how it burst
    that hand open
when I took it outside, a strength

that must have come out of hopelessness

    and the sudden light
and the trees. And I remember

the way he slapped the gun against

    his open palm,
kept slapping it, and wouldn’t speak.

        (from  Landscape at the End of the Century: Poems, pages 42-43: W.W. Norton & Company, New York, NY ©1991)