Elizabeth Bishop
Pink Dog
(Rio de Janeiro)
The sky and sun are both blue.
The beach is adorned with umbrellas of every color.
Then you trudge across the street naked.
Oh my, I’ve never seen such a naked dog before!
Pink and naked, not a hair on her head…
The passersby stare back in surprise.
They fear rabies.
You’re not crazy; you just have scabies
But look intelligent. Where are you babies?
The teats are a sign of a mother nursing her baby.
What slum has the poor girl hidden her children in?
You’re living on your wits while you’re begging?
Did you not know? All the newspapers have reported it.
How do they solve the problem of beggars in this country?
They are thrown into tidal river.
Yes, idiots, paralytics, parasites
You can go bobbing through the nighttime sewage.
The suburbs are dark.
When they beg,
You can be drunk, high, or on drugs, and still have legs.
What would you do if your four-legged sick dog was ill?
On the sidewalks and in the cafés
All beggars have been the subject of a joke
Now, even those who cannot afford to wear them can still do so.
Your condition would prevent you from being able to work.
It is difficult to even dog-paddle.
The practical and sensible are now in view.
Wear a fantasy.
You can’t be in this place tonight
No one will see it.
It’s time to put on the dog mascara.
Carnival has arrived, and Ash Wednesday is coming.
What sambas do you know? What will be your outfit?
Carnival is supposedly degenerating, according to some.
– Radios or Americans?
It’s ruined. They’re only talking.
Carnival is always a wonderful time!
It is not aesthetically pleasing to see a dog with depilated hair.
Put on your best clothes! Dress up to dance and celebrate Carnival!
Unveiling costume: the Feminine body of Elizabeth Bishop’s “Pink Dog”.
Elizabeth Bishop’s “Pink Dog” is a monologue between a poet and a canine that has been shaved pink to look like flesh and prancing around for food. The dog’s brave behavior catches the attention of the poet and the crowd, but it’s the speaker’s description of the incident and its subtleties that transforms the poem from a light-hearted tableau into a serious symbolism. The speaker’s narrative, which begins with curiosity and ends with advice, elucidates culture issues through the bare, female figure. The dog, whose body is dehumanized, ruffles the speaker’s sensibilities by revealing the socially guarded view of women and their intelligence.
Bishop’s dogs may look like any other street dog to a passerby, but the speaker uses it as a representation of a woman. Throughout this poem, speaker confounds the identity of mutt with that of a woman. This combination is best expressed in the title “Pink Dog.” The speaker’s description of the dog as pink is not just a literal color, but also a connotation that pink is the shade of femininity. This is further evidenced by the speaker’s constant preoccupation with female features of the dog’s shape. The speaker’s continued focus on the female aspects of the dog’s form is further evidence.
These two choices are brought out in the poem through syntactics and rhythms. The only parentheses are used to set off the former. The third line is a departure from the usual iambs, and instead uses anapestic double meter. Further complicating this metrical anomaly, the word “poor-bitch” gets a second stress, which further disturbs the distinct meter. “Bitch”, a near-rhyme between “teats”, is placed after the stress group.
The speaker is also not hesitant to use the dog as an example of a female personification. This adds further evidence that the mutt is a woman’s embodiment. It is interesting to note that the speaker compares dog behavior with human behavior, implying she will face the same or even worse punishment for her actions. The speaker personifies the dog by referring to it as “naked”. Only humans are referred to in this way. Dogs are never “naked”. Makeup is only for real women. This would be a grotesque act for a dog.
Then, why does this speaker make such a suggestion? Costuming does not represent the dog. Rather it represents what the dog represents, which is a feminine body. The speaker wants the audience to forget about its nakedness, femininity, and disturbing nature. The dog is introduced as “Naked you trot across an avenue.” Her body form is still ambiguous at this stage; it’s not clear if it’s a woman, a man, or something else. It is the “nakedness” of the creature that first catches the attention of the speaker.
This line is inverted to give these words more power. It breaks from the iambic-pentameter pattern of the first two lines. The same pattern is repeated with the “Naked pink” in the 5th line. This repetition of form and diction also emphasizes the bare womanliness. The speaker’s suggestion to “dress-up” clearly refers to the female naked body, not just the dog. This is a very unsettling figure. The speaker wants it covered and contained.
This entire dialogue, and the way it is presented by the speaker can be read as a commentary on how society reacts to the idea of exposing femininity. The second stanza illustrates this beautifully: “Startedled by the sight of the dog, passers-by draw back to stare at it.” Like the speaker, they are both fascinated and repulsed, but their attention is prompted by disquietude. The speaker’s long, abstruse warnings about beggars “bobbing” in sewage and her advice on Carnival costumes could be misguided attempts at relieving his anxiety over the exposed female form. By focusing on the dog’s poverty, she avoids the “eyesore”, which is the shockingly naked dog, or the brazenly-pink, overtly feminine dog. The final stanzas show how much the speaker clings on to the ideas she has expressed. Carnival is always great !/… Dress Up! “Dance and dress up at Carnival!”
In this context a speaker attempting to convert his dog to Carnival’s festivities – the elaborate clothes, ravishing makes-up and jaunty dances – is not embracing the sexual and bodily freedoms that are usually associated in the pre-Lent season carnivals. It is repressing and veiling these ideals. The dog’s nakedness would be tarnished if it were to wear clothes. Canines would need to stop begging in order to attend carnivals or dance “sambas” and abandon their traditional female duty of gathering food for their babies. The “fantasAa”, the Carnival event’s characteristic costume, best explains these flaws. It is a disguise as well as a failed illusion. This is a fantasy masquerading as reality. The dog’s symbolism is distorted by the mask.
This faASSade has a flawed logic that is further weakened because it is being propagated by a speaker who lacks sophistication and consistency. The end-rhymes in each tercet are often viewed as juvenile or hokey, due to their simple monosyllabic rhythms. The speaker does not maintain a consistent rhythm or meter. Or even the number of lines he uses. The formal incongruities of the speaker’s style accentuate the absurdity of dressing up the dog in mascara or treating her like a beggar. They make the speaker appear informal and humorous, which is contrary to the seriousness of the subject matter. This dissonance between the objective subject matter and the subjective observer is a sign of a self satirizing speaker who does not deserve the respect of the readers. The viewpoint is not expressed.
Elizabeth Bishop’s Pink Dog exposes, through its absurdities, the cultural aversion to naked femininity, which is embodied by the canine, a fetus, and the story told by the speaker. The speaker’s advice on how to dress for Carnival reveals its greatest contradiction, which is the apparent value of sexuality and the real environment of repression. The very things that are supposed to make a woman’s body more attractive- clothing, make-up, jovial Sambas- are actually what turn it into a mask, and what hides her motherly qualities. The reason why “They said that Carnival was degenerating” is that “Radios and Americans, or some other thing”, have lowered the traditional Latin concept of beauty. Now, even a small pink dog seems too bold- feminine.