Fifteen Dogs

Prince writes 15 poems, which appear throughout the text. Alexis explains in an author’s note that he crafted Prince’s poems in an experimental genre that French poet Francois Caradec invented to have meaning for both dogs and humans. Within Fifteen Dogs, the poems serve a symbolic function: They represent language that can bridge the dog-human divide.

Prince’s first poem embeds the name Majnoun: “The grass is wet on the hill. The sky has no end. / For the dog who waits for his mistress, / Madge, noon comes again” (28). The other dogs begin growling and barking, thinking that one of their mistresses is approaching, but Majnoun, whose name is audible in the poem (“Madge, noon”), feels moved and asks for another poem. 

The poems also typically reflect the dogs’ characters or behaviors. For example, after Atticus purges the pack of dogs who will not live by his rules, he recalls a poem Prince once told: “In the sunny world, with its small / things moving too fast, / I shy away from the light / and in the attic cuss the dark” (93). The poem Atticus recalls features his name (“attic cuss”) and symbolically represents Atticus’s rejection of the gift of human intelligence (“light”).