Received and Spent, Smiled and Went

In which this guy analyzes this Frederick Seidel poem:


SPIN

A dog named Spinach died today.
In her arms he died away.
Injected with what killed him.
Love is a cup that spilled him.
Spilled all the Spin that filled him.
Sunlight sealed and sent.
Received and spent.
Smiled and went.


and in doing so alludes to this Wallace Stevens poem:


THE SNOW MAN

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
   

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
   

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
   

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
   

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

while reminding me of this Updike poem (I can't imagine Seidel didn't write his without thinking of Updike's):


ANOTHER DOG'S DEATH

For days the good old bitch had been dying, her back
pinched down to the spine and arched to ease the pain,
her kidneys dry, her muzzle white. At last
I took a shovel into the woods and dug her grave
   

in preparation for the certain. She came along,
which I had not expected. Still, the children gone,
such expeditions were rare, and the dog,
spayed early, knew no nonhuman word for love.
   

She made her stiff legs trot and let her bent tail wag.
We found a spot we liked, where the pines met the
    field.
The sun warmed her fur as she dozed and I dug;
I carved her a safe place while she protected me.
   

I measured her length with the shovel’s long handle;
she perked in amusement, and sniffed the heaped-up
    earth.
Back down at the house, she seemed friskier,
but gagged, eating. We called the vet a few days later.
   

They were old friends. She held up a paw, and he
injected a violet fluid. She swooned on the lawn;
we watched her breathing quickly slow and cease.
In a wheelbarrow up to the hole, her warm fur shone.

While I'm here, have this, the best cover of a Go-Gos' song ever, which has nothing to do with the above but has been in my head all freaking day: