Dog

I chose the poem Dog by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. This poem seems very simple when it is initially read, but once you dig deeper into it and research the history of the time it was written, you learn much more about it. When you first read the poem, you can see that it is about a dog who is free to do what he wants when he wants. The reason Ferlinghetti chose to write about this was because he was expressing how he wishes he was more like the dog. He wished he was free to do what he wanted and to express himself through his art without being called a communist like he was along with many other artists during this time period. Ferlingehitti makes ironic jokes in this poem about the current government's political situation, all through the drawn out dog metaphor that makes up the whole poem. Freedom is a big unlying theme woven throughout this whole poem. Even though superfically this poem talks about a dog, when you look more in depth you see all of the political and personal fights it is standing up for. After writing this poem, Ferlinghetti joined his other artists in jail for communism even though all they were doing was expressing themselves through art. This is the point that he was making in his poem Dog.