The first poem Robert Sward ever published was about a dog, so it’s fitting that the verse that got him nominated for one of poetry’s top honors also concerns Canis familiaris. On Tuesday, Nov. 30, Sward got an email from Joseph Zaccardi, editor of the Marin Poetry Center Anthology, telling him the Center had nominated his poem “Inter-Species Healing A Specialty,” which features a dog taking humankind to task over its narcissism and neuroses, for a Pushcart Prize. (Poem reprinted below.)
“It’s a big one, yes, and for me it’s especially good news because I have the New and Selected Poems coming out in 10 months,” says Sward, who lives on the Westside of Santa Cruz (and is the poetry editor for Santa Cruz Weekly the “Santa Cruz Poets, Santa Cruz Inspiration” series on this site). He explains that of the various poetry prizes, the Pushcart, which represents the best of the small presses, is cherished by poets because it’s the grassroots version of a prize. “There’s the Guggenheim, where you’re sort of given a block of money,” says Sward, who has in fact been awarded a Guggenheim. “But this, you’re nominated by your peers.”
In “Inter-Species Healing A Specialty,” which is rendered in street-lean vernacular, a tough-love-talking speaker identified as “Shelby the Dog” pulls no punches: “You and your melancholia. / You know what it is, a brain? / A salty tissue and membrane soup. / Woof fuckin’ woof / I’m not the dog I was, / and you, well, / you’re not the dog you were either.” Through the voice of Shelby, Sward ruminates on the nature of consciousness and human shortcoming. “The dog asks a question: ‘You think God is present in you in one way and in me another?’” he says. “We have these huge egos and we’re always defending our territory, and I don’t think dogs have egos in quite the same way, or maybe not at all.”
The real-life Shelby is a 13-year-old border collie/Chow cross who Sward and his wife, artist Gloria Alford, are keeping while Sward’s daughter is busy relocating to Austin. Sward says he’s found himself inexplicably drawn to Shelby and perfectly able to communicate with her. “I have no trouble knowing what the dog wants,” he says. “If I get in the car I know the dog wants to travel.”
Shelby’s not the first of her kind to find her way into Sward’s heart, either. After the New and Selected Poems is finished, Sward—who, it must be noted, writes many poems not about dogs—plans to publish a chapbook called The Dogs of My Life, starting, perhaps, with the mutt in his first published poem, in the Chicago Review in 1957. In “Uncle Dog: The Poet at Nine,” a boy watches a garbage man and especially the dog in the cab, identifying more with the carefree, fully present animal than with its laboring human owner. Since then, Sward’s appreciation for man’s best friend has only deepened.
“I think there is such a thing as interspecies healing,” says Sward, “and it may be more one-sided than we know.” See poem below.
INTER-SPECIES HEALING A SPECIALTY
Shelby the Dog:
So, what is consciousness?
75% of the brain consists of water,
the surface of the earth,
75% water,
and a banana too, 75% water
You and your melancholia. You know what it is, a brain?
A salty tissue and membrane soup.
Woof fuckin’ woof
I’m not the dog I was,
and you, well,
you’re not the dog you were either.
But brains you got, three pounds, you people,
100 billion neurons,
1.6 pints of blood flow through the brain every minute.
Problem with you now is you live in the past.
You’ve got one frequency of oscillation,
we’ve got another. You know,
dogs are never “away,” are they? But you, boss,
where are you?
Tell me, you think God is present in you one way
and in me another?
Look at me. If you have eyes,
you have feelings.
And what do they call it?
Inter-species healing.
You wanna get better? You’re getting better.
–Robert Sward
[reprinted from Marin Poetry Center Anthology, 2010,
edited by Joseph Zaccardi and Rose Black.]
