Comparing The Felines Of Heaven 'And Billy Collins The Revenant'

Fred Chappell, in his 2014 poem, “The Felines of Heaven” and Billy Collins, in his 2005 poem, “The Revenant”, start of the same by their titles involving animals. “Ultimately, animals offer poets a mirror through which to explore themselves, an unwitting foil used to understand what it means to be human. Sometimes the comparison ultimately reveals a dissatisfaction with humanity.” (citation?) Poets often use animals to express love and feelings that humans feel using personification, but animals are also used to show how bad humanity can be sometimes. Personally, I love animals and the fact that poets use them in their poems to express their feelings and emotions. In both poems, the animals are house pets and we know this in Collins, “The Revenant” when it says, “the jingling of my tags drove me mad” (25) and in Chappell’s, “The Felines of Heaven” because during the poem it describes the animals as honoring and loving, characteristics you wouldn’t necessarily find in stray animals. …show more content…
“A revenant is an angry spirit or reanimated corpse, typically believed to return from the grave to terrorize the living. This image offers a specific, terrifying image and creates certain expectations for the reader.” (citation?) This makes sense because the attitude in Collins’, “The Revenant”, the dog that was put to sleep has hatred for his owner. On the opposite side of that, the attitude in Chappell’s, “The Felines of Heaven” is that the cats love their owners as shown by “They loved us better than we could love ourselves”