Charles Simic – “Country Fair”

If you didn’t see the six-legged dog,
It doesn’t matter.
We did, and he mostly lay in the corner.
As for the extra legs,

One got used to them quickly
And thought of other things.
Like, what a cold, dark night
To be out at the fair.

Then the keeper threw a stick
And the dog went after it
On four legs, the other two flapping behind,
Which made one girl shriek with laughter.

She was drunk and so was the man
Who kept kissing her neck.
The dog got the stick and looked back at us.
And that was the whole show.

After the first reading of a few of Charles Simic’s poems, I am left wondering what happens and what Simic is trying to prove with the difficulty of penetrating his poems at first inspection. I further explored “Country Fair,” one of his poems with which I am left confused. The concept of the poem seems straightforward at first: a fair-goer (the narrator) observes a six-legged dog and is not overly impressed by the fact that the dog has six legs but by the way in which the dog looks at him. I am sure that I would be surprised to see a dog with six legs, but the narrator says that “One got used to them [the extra legs] quickly” (5). The way that the narrator feels like he can easily think about other personal issues such as the way in which the weather affects him and how the two kissing people are captivated with themselves rather than the dog leads me to think that Simic may be saying that we are too involved in our own affairs to worry about the major concerns facing society. The purpose of this dog is for entertainment. In order to attain this goal some sort of genetic manipulation or birth defect must be exploited. The dog’s quality of living (in terms of just being a dog to show off, having useless legs, and having to fetch a stick out of necessity as opposed to for pleasure) is lower than that of the average four-legged dog. When the people who are supposed to enjoy the defect of the dog do not enjoy the defect, then the process of creating the defect is pointless and just serves to harm the dog. The dog, who has surely seen other dogs with fewer legs, must wonder why he is different and why the other dogs get to roam free while he must stay cooped up at be looked at all day. Hence the last line, “And that was the whole show” (16), shows the reader that the narrator may have realized the poor situation of the dog through his exchanged look with the dog. The narrator who realizes that people, like those who are kissing and even him, do not appreciate the entertainment as much as they should in order to justify the harming of the dog.

William Wordsworth – “On The Banks Of A Rocky Stream”

Behold an emblem of our human mind
Crowded with thoughts that need a settled home,
Yet, like to eddying balls of foam
Within this whirlpool, they each other chase
Round and round, and neither find
An outlet nor a resting-place!
Stranger, if such disquietude be thine,
Fall on thy knees and sue for help divine.

Using CPR to analyze this poem gives us a few plausible answers to questions not immediately present in the text. Literally the poem describes a stream, which is likened to both the human mind and a whirlpool. It refers to an uneasy “Stranger” who must ask for help in sorting out his or her thoughts. One odd aspect of this poem is that it is talking to the reader and instructing him or her to “behold” and “fall on thy knees” and “sue.” Following this pattern makes the reader wonder if he or she is the stranger, which ends up being the case. Another question brought about by reading this poem is why the stream and human mind are alike. The poem tells us that the mind has many thoughts which are all flowing around and trying to find a “resting-place” to stay or an “outlet” to get out. The whirlpool is like all the thoughts swirling around in our mind in that it does not allow circulating water to escape. We also wonder what the “help divine” to which Wordsworth refers is. Based on the knowledge that Wordsworth was a Romantic poet who used nature as inspiration, we can possibly say that this “help divine” is nature and that the way to find peace in a hectic mind is through spending time in nature.