Hate That Cat

Jack begins to doubt his writing abilities and freezes up whenever he is confronted with formal poetic techniques, which highlights The Link Between Creativity and Artistic Freedom. He is “impressed” by Tennyson’s ability to help a reader see, hear, and feel the eagle in his poem; however, Tennyson’s ease with formal poetic techniques intimidates Jack. He is certain that he “will never be able to do all that stuff / that Mr. Tennyson does” (55), and he loses his confidence, feeling as though he’ll never measure up. However, just a few pages later, Jack uses alliteration with the repetition of the “p” sound when he writes about the “pile of presents” and “pawing through the packages” on Christmas morning (59, 58). He recounts “a blur of black fur” before spotting “a pink nose / tiny black paws / and blinking sleepy eyes” (59). These lines include internal rhyme in “blur” and “fur,” slant rhyme in “pink” and “blinking,” alliteration in “blur” and “black” as well as in “black” and “blinking,” all using the same initial “b” sound. He even describes the “crackling” fire in the grate that morning, an example of onomatopoeia. Unbeknownst to himself, Jack employs multiple poetic devices in his own writing, even though he feels stuck whenever he is instructed to use them. His obvious writing ability, in light of his belief that he lacks ability, creates further dramatic irony. Jack can absolutely employ the devices about which he’s learned, especially when he is given the creative freedom to not use them. Also, Jack finds writing more enjoyable when he can write what he feels like rather than when he’s worried about checking off a list of all the things “real writing” should do, according to Uncle Bill. To this end, Jack is grateful for Miss Stretchberry’s lessons and insights that always emphasize artistic freedom.

This section also reveals The Emotional Power of Poetry by showing that Jack and his mother connect over poetry. Jack writes that his mother signs the words “again” and “Stop” when he reads Christopher Myers’s poem to her, tapping the rhythm of stressed and unstressed syllables. This is the first time that Jack is overtly writing about his mother and disclosing that she is deaf, though this was foreshadowed in the previous section with Jack’s preoccupation with how a person who cannot hear responds to writing that describes sound. Thus, just as he does not realize that he uses the very devices he so admires in Tennyson’s writing, or that he continues to write about Sky even when he said he could not, Jack doesn’t realize that he is writing about the ”IM-POSS-I-BLE” topic of his mother. Jack’s close relationship with his mother is obvious since he finds a way to share his interest in poetry with her; he taps the rhythm of a poem so that his mother can feel it, even if she cannot hear it. She taps her heart in response, showing how the poem’s rhythm mimics the beating of her heart. This gesture also conveys that she loves this way of connecting with her son—suggested by the metonymic association of emotion with the heart—and that she believes that poetry’s rhythm and the rhythm of life are linked, represented by her heartbeat.

Jack’s poems also reveal poetry’s power to help him process his emotions. In his poem titled “The Gift,” which is inspired by William Carlos Williams’s “The Red Wheelbarrow,” Jack writes that “So much depends upon” the black kitten that was his Christmas present (57). Miss Stretchberry tends to ask Jack to explain what depends upon whatever it is he describes in his Williams-inspired poems, and he politely declines to do so in this poem. However, this time, Miss Stretchberry doesn’t ask him to explain himself because the importance of the kitten is obvious in light of Jack’s other writings. Jack was traumatized by the death of his dog, and he is still dealing with this grief. Just the previous month, he declared that he didn’t want another pet since he was afraid that he might lose it, too. Therefore, what depends upon this kitten is Jack’s willingness to love again, even though the loss of that object of love is always a risk. Jack explores his feelings about this further in his next poem, which he titles “So Much.” He writes that the thing upon which “So much depends” is

a black kitten

dotted with white

beside the photo

of my yellow dog (61).

Jack doesn’t call the kitten beside the photo his in the way he claims Sky, calling him “my” dog. To give his heart—again—to an animal who could get sick or get hit by another car is difficult for Jack; his ability to let himself feel that kind of love, again, in the face of all the terrible possibilities, is emotionally “So Much.” Through his writing, Jack explores his feelings and works them out, which fortifies him to deal with his big emotions.