Who is the speaker of this poem? What do we know about him? ...

[silviawilliams41]

Who is the speaker of this poem? What do we know about him?
 
  What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

What elements create the humorous effects of the poem?
 
  What will be an ideal response?

[momo1250]

Answer to Question 1

• As lines 14 immediately make clear, the speaker is the farmer of the poems title. We see that hes a busy and hard-working man (lines 23); the dialect in which he expresses himself suggests that hes not educated, but he is clearly a sensitive personsensitive to the natural world in which he moves and from which he wrests his living (lines 3439), and sensitive especially to the feelings of his wife, despite her continuing to shrink from him. Under the circumstances, he seems patient and understanding.

Answer to Question 2

• One significant element of the poems humor is its use of familiar habits of dogssniffing, licking, barking, etc.and its skillful and illuminating combination of two images or ideas, in both the first and last stanzas. Another is the allusion to the Browning sonnet in the context of a dogs devotion and its shedding. And, not to overanalyze a charming jeu desprit, but line 6 is especially interesting: it amuses us in the way it fills the five-syllable requirement by using the same word five times, a word whose meaning fits the context and which even sounds like a dog barking, especially when repeated this way. (Also, as with the Browning reference, it may remind readers of two famousand very seriouslines of poetry that are similarly constructed: Lears cry of Never Never Never Never Never at the end of Shakespeares King Lear and Walt Whitmans Death Death Death Death Death in Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking.)