UNCLE DOG: THE POET AT 9
UNCLE DOG: THE POET AT 9
I did not want to be old Mr.
Garbage man, but uncle dog
who rode sitting beside him.
Uncle dog had always looked
to me to be truck-strong
wise-eyed, a cur-like Ford
Of a dog. I did not want
to be Mr. Garbage man because
all he had was cans to do.
Uncle dog sat there me-beside-him
emptying nothing. Barely even
looking from garbage side to side:
Like rich people in the backseats
of chauffeur-cars, only shaggy
in an unwagging tall-scrawny way.
Uncle dog belonged any just where
he sat, but old Mr. Garbage man
had to stop at everysingle can.
I thought. I did not want to be Mr.
Everybody calls them that first.
A dog is said, Dog! Or by name.
I would rather be called Rover
than Mr. And sit like a tough
smart mongrel beside a garbage man.
Uncle dog always went to places
unconcerned, without no hurry.
Independent like some leashless
Toot. Honorable among scavenger
can-picking dogs. And with a bitch
at every other can. And meat:
His for the barking. Oh, I wanted
to be uncle dog--sharp, high fox-
eared, cur-Ford truck-faced
With his pick of the bones.
A doing, truckman's dog
and not a simple child-dog
Nor friend to man, but an uncle
traveling, and to himself--
and a bitch at every second can.
(reprinted from "The Voice That Is Great Within Us, American Poetry of the 20th Century," edited by Hayden Carruth, Bantam Books)
These are such, sad, generous poems--peopled with characters it's impossible not to love, especially Robert's podiatrist-Jewish-Rosicrucian father with his wisdom that bridges dualities expounding on the feet and the soul, sex and death, the broken and the whole. In one poem, Robert asserts, In a world of 'No, dogs are a Yes.' And in the world of poetry, this book is a resounding Yes. Read it when you're happy, but especially read it when you're depressed. You'll find yourself joining in with the many dogs in these poems, saying, 'Woof, woof f----in' woof!”
—Poet Ellen Bass
About Robert
Guggenheim Fellow, chosen by Lucille Clifton for a Villa Montalvo Literary Arts Award, author of more than 20 books, including Four Incarnations (Coffee House Press), Heavenly Sex, God is in the Cracks and The Collected Poems (now in its 2nd printing),...
Connections
Causes Robert Sward Supports
Audubon Society, National Geographic, "Green," the Environment, SPCA...
Robert’s Favorite Books
Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, Saul Bellow's Adventures of Augie March, Ezra Pound's Make It New, T.S. Eliot's Collected Poems, The Autobiography of Benjamin...
Robert is a fan of
"The Voice That Is Great Within Us, American Poetry 20th Century
Late one evening at 604 S.Clinton St., Iowa City, Iowa, infant daughter asleep in my lap, my just having read Dylan Thomas' "Portrait of the Artist" and James Joyce's "Ulysses," I found myself scribbling and the lines (so it seemed to me) falling naturally into three-line stanzas. In 1957 the Iowa Poetry Workshop was a haven for formalists and students of the New Criticism (see Brooks and Warren, "Undersanding Poetry", etc.), and, odd man out, I was working in free verse.
Anyway, writing from the "child's point of view", hearing the voice, my own voice, so to speak, the hearing for the first time what seemed... utterly natural and true to my experience, that is, a 9-year-old kid relating to the life of a garbage man's dog, a life of an Ulysses-like wanderer, aloof, gypsy-like, nomadic, the rag and bone shop of Chicago's rich and magical garbage and the dog, filled wth self-esteem and a sense of purpose, keeping his head high, mangy alley work in no way problematic, maintaining dignity... ah, I dunno, I'm just chattrering. But something of that. Something of that underlies "Uncle Dog: The Poet at 9" and the poem as it was written, and the poem as I experience it now, 2013, more than 50 years later.
"The Voice That Is Great Within Us, American Poetry 20th Century
The Voice That is Great Within us, American Poetry of the 20th Century, edited by Hayden Carruth, includes "Uncle Dog: The Poet at 9" and a second poem, "Concert," excerpted from Horgbortom Stringbottom, I am Yours, You are History (Swallow Press, 1970).
I have never understood the bio which reads, "Sward worked for seven years in a canning factory on the South Side of Chicago." True, I've held some odd jobs over the years, but never worked in a canning factory, nor, for that matter never lived on the South Side of Chicago.
Nonetheless, grateful to be included in Hayden Carruth's anthology.