20 Mar Dog’s Death” –Besides the title of the poem, which details foreshadow that the dog will die?

Your response MUST be at least 250 words and MUST include at least one integrated quotation with a line citation.

I REPEAT: Do NOT quote more than 3 lines of poetry at a time. Use a slash between lines. Note that there is a space before / and after a line / slash.  Cite line numbers. Include the name of the poem and the poet’s full name in your topic sentence.

Sample: The persona in Robert Haydens Those Winter Sundays regrets never showing his father appreciation. He begins by remembering that Sundays too my father got up early / and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold (1-2).

John Updike (19322009)
Dogs Death 1969

She must have been kicked unseen or brushed by a car.

Too young to know much, she was beginning to learn

To use the newspapers spread on the kitchen floor

And to win, wetting there, the words, Good dog! Good dog!

(5) We thought her shy malaise was a shot reaction.

The autopsy disclosed a rupture in her liver.

As we teased her with play, blood was filling her skin

And her heart was learning to lie down forever.

Monday morning, as the children were noisily fed

(10) And sent to school, she crawled beneath the youngests bed.

We found her twisted and limp but still alive.

In the car to the vets, on my lap, she tried

To bite my hand and died. I stroked her warm fur

And my wife called in a voice imperious with tears.

(15) Though surrounded by love that would have upheld her,

Nevertheless she sank and, stiffening, disappeared.

Back home, we found that in the night her frame,

Drawing near to dissolution, had endured the shame

Of diarrhoea and had dragged across the floor

(20) To a newspaper carelessly left there. Good dog.