Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Bob Hicok’s “Cutting Edge” is a wry, self-deprecating reflection on sentimentality, grief, and the perceived incompatibility between emotional vulnerability and artistic credibility. The poem’s title suggests a desire to belong to the avant-garde, the forefront of artistic innovation, yet the speaker quickly undercuts this notion by admitting to a deeply personal and unsophisticated sorrow: he cries when dogs die in movies. This admission sets the tone for the poem’s central tension—the struggle between an intellectualized, detached artistic persona and the unavoidable, deeply human emotions that disrupt it. The speaker’s inability to suppress his feelings becomes both a source of humor and an implicit critique of artistic posturing, suggesting that authenticity, even in its most sentimental forms, has more value than cold innovation for its own sake.

The poem opens with an immediate rejection of avant-garde status: “I can’t be in the avant-garde because I cry when dogs die in movies.” This assertion plays on the stereotype that cutting-edge art demands emotional detachment or a certain ironic distance. By aligning sentimentality with artistic failure, the speaker humorously suggests that deep feeling is at odds with intellectual credibility. However, the structure of the poem, with its plainspoken confessions and organic flow of thought, resists this implication. Hicok does not write in an experimental style, nor does he attempt to subvert traditional poetic forms. Instead, the poem itself embraces the kind of direct, unembellished emotion that it claims is incompatible with artistic innovation, creating an ironic tension between content and form.

As the poem progresses, the speaker expands on his sensitivity. It is not just the death of dogs in movies that moves him, but even minor forms of canine suffering—abandonment, mild punishment, a rolled-up magazine. This deep empathy extends to his own pet, an eight-year-old dog whose mortality is already a source of grief. The simple phrase, “When I do the math I get weepy,” conveys the inevitability of loss, how time itself is a harbinger of sorrow. The speaker is unable to separate present joy from future pain; even as he pets his dog, he envisions the moment he will have to say goodbye. This foreshadowed grief is compounded by a visceral image: “as the vet slips the needle in.” The inevitability of euthanasia, a controlled and almost clinical act of mercy, underscores the cruel arithmetic of pet ownership—that love is measured against an always-too-short lifespan.

The poem then shifts into a moment of intimacy and reciprocity between human and animal. The dog, unaware of its future death but deeply attuned to its owner’s sadness, licks the speaker’s tears and snot. This act of comfort is instinctual, a pure form of connection that requires no articulation. The dog does not question grief or attempt to intellectualize it; it simply responds. This moment is juxtaposed with an even more startling act of acceptance: the dog licking “menstrual blood from my wife’s finger this morning for what it is.” The phrase “for what it is” is crucial—there is no judgment, no revulsion, just an understanding of bodily reality. The dog’s instinctive recognition of the world as it is, unfiltered by social or artistic expectations, serves as a quiet contrast to the speaker’s own struggles with expressing grief. The dog accepts; the speaker agonizes.

The final lines return to the theme of artistic identity. The speaker acknowledges that sorrow over a dog’s death “looks silly in a beret.” The beret, often associated with stereotypical images of avant-garde artists and intellectuals, becomes a symbol of performative sophistication, an emblem of an art world that values detachment over earnestness. This line reinforces the poem’s central irony: the avant-garde, with all its supposed daring and radicalism, is often more concerned with aesthetic posture than with real emotion. The speaker suggests that grief—especially grief over something as simple and universal as the loss of a pet—should not be couched in experimentalism or artistic self-consciousness. Instead, it “should be plainspoken, like everything else I try hard not to say.” This conclusion reaffirms the poem’s implicit argument: that honesty, even when it is sentimental or vulnerable, carries more weight than forced intellectualism. The phrasing of the final line also suggests that the speaker struggles with articulating other deeply felt emotions, as though plainspoken truths are both necessary and difficult to confront.

Hicok’s style in “Cutting Edge” is characteristically conversational, blending humor with profound emotional resonance. The poem’s structure is loose, flowing in a way that mimics the speaker’s train of thought, making it feel spontaneous and unguarded. The humor, particularly in the exaggerated contrast between avant-garde ideals and the rawness of personal sorrow, prevents the poem from becoming overly sentimental, even as it openly embraces sentiment. Hicok’s diction remains simple, reinforcing the speaker’s argument that some emotions do not require embellishment or innovation—they are best communicated plainly, without pretense.

Ultimately, “Cutting Edge” is a meditation on authenticity in both art and life. It suggests that true artistic expression does not require ironic detachment or avant-garde posturing but rather an honest engagement with the emotions that make us human. The poem rejects the notion that sentimentality is a weakness, instead positioning it as a form of resistance against artistic affectation. In doing so, it elevates the very thing the speaker claims disqualifies him from the avant-garde: his deep, unabashed love for a dog, and the inescapable sorrow that comes with it.

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