Nathaniel McFarland

AP Lit and Comp

5/7/13

A Poem Saucier than a Saucer of Milk

Dana Gioia’s poem, “Alley Cat Love Song”, is ballad of a female house cat’s perspective where she expresses her longing for her mustard brown lover, Fred, and all the inferno of passion she feels for him. The poem consists of three stanzas of six lines each. Hidden just beneath the surface of this poem is not just a story of two lovestruck cats but also one of parody and one sleepless author.

While read for face value this poem is about an amorous kitty and her feline lover, but upon closer look it has a more comedic meaning. The first is a parody of the high romances of poetry. While must poetry contains one lover calling out in hormone filled passion for the other, ( ex His Coy Mistress) here we find that the role has quite humorously been filled by a cat. While other poems of passion the speaker is human, in this we have a cat’s perspective on love, longing, and hope of hanky panky. This leads to lines where a human might have describe their lack of clothes but we get “I have nothing but my flea collar on,” because the voice is that of a cat’s. The refrain on lines one and three which reads “Come into the garden, Fred,” is a direct parody of Alfred Tennyson’s poem, “Come into the Garden, Maud” in which the first and third lines match its own title.

       Then under the parody there lies another story, that of a sleepless Dana Gioia. The first hint of this comes at the line, “I'll wait by the screen door till dawn.” which implies that the cat will wait for her master to let her out for hours. Then the last two lines of the third stanza read, “So ignore me now, and you'll hear my meow-As I scratch all night at the door.” From these lines we can infer that the owner of the cat in the story had to listen to a cat in heat meow and scratch at the door all night and would justifiably become very annoyed. Maybe the owner is Dana and she became annoyed enough with her cats actions to write a poem like “Why I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House.”

In this poem the rhyming is very complex. The first stanza is a simple rhyme scheme  where the lines rhyme ababab. The second stanza rhymes cdcded and third stanzas rhymes fgfghg The second and third line both have alternating end rhymes except for the 5th line of each stanza that does not rhyme with any other line. Though in the third stanza the fifth line does not rhyme with any others but has an internal rhyme. The rhymes of this poem and its shift in it gives it a playful and enchanting nature.

        “Alley Cat Love Song” is not just about a horny furball but also about poking fun at romantic poetry and the author dealing with her cat. This poem is meant to be sung and uses its alternate rhyming to facilitate its flow. With grace, style and humor “Alley Cat Love Song” makes a wonderful ballad and piece of poetry.