We looked at the poems The Behaviour of Dogs and Flying to Belfast, :: English Literature

We looked at the poems The Behaviour of Dogs and Flying to Belfast We looked at the poems The Behaviour of Dogs and Flying to Belfast, 1977 by Craig Raine. In Raine's poem The Behaviour of dogs he describes to us the many different breeds and types of dog that there are in the world and what effect they have on our lives. In the poem Craig Raine describes dogs in a different way than we would normally think of them to make us see them in unfamiliar ways. To make the dogs' actions easier for us to imagine he uses imagery of things we see in everyday life and on television but that we don't usually associate with dogs, "Their feet are four-leafed clovers that leave a jigsaw in the dust". This start of the poem is describing dogs' feet. Saying the dog's feet are four-leafed clovers is describing the shape of the dogs paw, but also four-leafed clovers are associated with good luck, which gives us a benign and warm association. The second verse is also submitting a friendly atmosphere around dogs when it refers to the way dogs "grin" and "tease us", this shows the good relationship shared between man and dog. Raine describes the teeth of dogs like "Yale keys" suggesting that they are serrated, jagged and sharp, Raine also uses imagery to describe the way a dog's tongue slips out as it pants, "joke-shop Niagara tongues," this line also includes an element of humour if you imagine a massive joke-shop tongue! In the third verse Raine starts focusing on the different breeds of dog, and certain characteristics that make them different to one another. He mentions a whippet and how it "jack-knifes across the grass", implying that the whippet is sharp and quick. He also notices an afghan hound with its fringe of straight hair on either side of its head like the traditional folds of an "opera house curtain"; he also mentions how the afghan looks a bit like Wild Bill Hicock - which implies that dogs can sometimes have human characteristics, the 'human' theme is carried on in the last verse, when Raine is mentioning certain things that dogs do. In the next verse Raine talks about the Labrador and how it, "cranks a village pump", this is a description of how it wags its tail so vigorously and enthusiastically. Then he goes to the opposite type of dog, the boxer who, "shimmies her rump, docked to a door knocker", this describes how a boxer has to wag its whole posterior because its tail has been cut off. When describing the Alsatian Raine says, "the