Our nod to National Poetry Month continues with a celebration of Billy Collins' ironic take on Man's Best Friend

By Rosemary Laughlin
English teacher
Posted Friday, April 14, 2006, features

[Note: In honor of National Poetry Month, The Online Gargoyle asked each of Uni's English teachers to pick a favorite poem. We were curious: What does this poem mean to you? Why does it move you? How does it move you? What's the history of your relationship with the poem? Suzanne Linder started us off with her selection on April 5, followed by Steve Rayburn on April 7. Today, Rosemary Laughlin, who teaches subfreshman English (and who taught junior English from 1986 to 2003), discusses her choice. Contact us here or here to tell us about your own favorite poem.]

When I read of this nice little project, the first poem that came to mind probably did so because it was raining and I had just been out walking my dog. It's by Billy Collins and it makes me laugh when I read it or even think about it.

It has a very serious, perhaps pretentious title, which makes the poem itself humorous: “To a Stranger Born in Some Distant Country Hundreds of Years from Now.” Collins gives in an epigraph the source of his title, namely, a line from a poet called Mary Oliver, “I write poems for a stranger who will be born in some distant country hundreds of years from now.”

What follows isn't fancy. It's in free verse, using repetition and literal imagery. It's set in an Irish pub where children are allowed. I can only find one metaphor (wrinkling the conversation). The insight is a truism, but I thoroughly enjoy this little irony about Man's Best Friend:

“To a Stranger Born in Some Distant Country Hundreds of Years from Now”

Nobody here likes a wet dog.
No one wants anything to do with a dog
that is wet from being out in the rain
or retrieving a stick from a lake.
Look how she wanders around the crowded pub tonight
going from one person to another
hoping for a pat on the head, a rub behind the ears,
something that could be given with one hand
without even wrinkling the conversation.

But everyone pushes her away,
some with a knee, others with the sole of a boot.
Even the children, who don't realize she is wet
until they go to pet her,
push her away,
then wipe their hands on their clothes.
And whenever she heads toward me,
I show her my palm, and she turns aside.

O stranger of the future!
O inconceivable being!
whatever the shape of your house,
however you scoot from place to place,
no matter how strange and colorless the clothes you
may wear,
I bet nobody there likes a wet dog either.
I bet everybody in your pub,
even the children, pushes her away.

Poem: “To a Stranger Born in Some Distant Country Hundreds of Years from Now,” by Billy Collins, from “Picnic, Lightning,” 1998 (University of Pittsburgh Press)