Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep A Gun In The House

“Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep A Gun In The House” is a free-verse poem of 20 lines divided into five unequal stanzas. There is a lack of meter and rhyme. The poem employs informal diction and relates a common experience. It is a straightforward lyric poem with narrative elements. The poem relies on the humor of the title, the common scenario of being annoyed by a situation out of one’s own control, the repetition of auditory imagery, and the transformative image of dog as musician. About formality, Collins said the following in an interview with George Plimpton:

Well, in one sense—a loose sense—I consider all my poems to be formal. I try to write poems that are a series of clear, solid lines, to give each poem a stanzaic shape, and usually to organize poems around a beginning, middle and end, or at least a distinct turn. I hope all that adds up to a certain degree of formality, an appearance of formality, anyway. The poem may not be wearing the official uniform of the sonnet, but still, its clothes are ironed and its buttons done up—except sometimes maybe the top one (Interview with Billy Collins. 2001. Paris Review.).

Collins structures this poem by dividing it into two sections. The first two narrative stanzas realistically present the speaker’s problem: “The neighbors’ dog will not stop barking” (Lines 1 and 5). The second stanza also shows the failure of the speaker’s initial solution of playing Beethoven’s symphony “full blast” (Line 7). This doesn’t drown out the dog’s barking; it just diminishes the sound. The next three stanzas recount an imaginative leap the speaker makes as a sort of Plan B. They reimagine the dog as part of the orchestra, “as if Beethoven / had included a part for barking dog” (Lines 11-12). These three stanzas are more lyrical and explore the possible importance of the dog’s would-be song and the listener’s experience.