"Dog's Death" by John Updike

     If I'm going to be 100% honest, I am not a fan of poety, I never have been. Usually when I read my mind tends to go elsewhere, no matter what form of literature I have in front of me. It could be something I totally have interest in and I have to re-read the page a few times before I really get it. Reading poetry only amplifies this feeling for me.

    However, last week this changed. In a homework assignment where we had to read a selection from the Bedford, with multiple poems, I was no where near enthusied about it. Until I read the poem, "Dog's Death", by John Updike. It was the first time that a poem had sparked any emotion from me.

    I'll be honest, the poem actually made me cry. Whether I was super emotional that day or it was truly a beautiful piece I'm not sure, but reading it literally made me cry. An absolute first for me. The structure that the author had used, writing it in chronological order starting when the dog was just a puppy, made me think of my dogs, who had both passed in 2019. Writing in the short span of the dog's life really stuck with me and made me emotional, which is a lot for a poem to do. I don't think that I've ever batted an eye at a poem, I simply read it with a blank face. The fact that this poem made me even change my expression suprised me.

    After finishing the poem, and re-reading it again, feeling the same emotion that I did the first time, I wondered why no literature really had ever done this to me before. In the end, I think I just really love dogs. I cry whenever I see a dog in pain. It could literally be a 3 second video of a dog limping, I don't even have to know the dog, and I will be in tears. When I watched A Dog's Purpose for the first time I cried a total of 7 times throughout the movie. 

    All of that aside, "Dog's Death" gave me hope for poetry. It made me interested in reading more, knowing that if a poem had made me so emotional this time, perhaps I could find more joy in reading poetry, and focus on analyzing the poetry harder. Even though the poem itself I did not enjoy, because it was so sad, I enjoyed truly understanding the poem and gained a new respect for poetry as a whole.