"I can absolutely recommend this book to everyone who ever loved an animal." ~Jackie

A collection of new and favorite poems, celebrating the dogs that have enriched the poet’s world

Beloved by her readers, special to the poet’s own heart, Mary Oliver’s dog poems offer a special window into her world. Dog Songs collects some of the most cherished poems together with new works, offering a portrait of Oliver’s relationship to the companions that have accompanied her daily walks, warmed her home, and inspired her work. To be illustrated with images of the dogs themselves, the subjects will come to colorful life here.

These are poems of love and laughter, heartbreak and grief. In these pages we visit with old friends, including Oliver’s well-loved Percy, and meet still others. Throughout, the many dogs of Oliver’s life emerge as fellow travelers, but also as guides, spirits capable of opening our eyes to the lessons of the moment and the joys of nature and connection.

Dog Songs is a testament to the power and depth of the human-animal exchange, from an observer of extraordinary vision.

Jackie says:

"I'm not much of a poetry person.  But I have heard so much praise from my coworkers about Mary Oliver, and she won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, so when Dog Songs hit my desk, I gave it a try.  I was easily able to get into the emotions she has used for these poems--I'm a animal lover and consider my furry companions to be part of the family, as she clearly does as well.  There is joy, love, heartbreak and sorrow in these poems, and they are beautiful.  So I'm still not really a poetry person, I can absolutely recommend this book to everyone who ever loved an animal." 

Where's Booker? Waxing Poetic About Mary Oliver's Latest

Mornings with the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver

In A Thousand Mornings, Mary Oliver returns to the imagery that has come to define her life’s work, transporting us to the marshland and coastline of her beloved home, Provincetown, Massachusetts. In these pages, Oliver shares the wonder of dawn, the grace of animals, and the transformative power of attention. Whether studying the leaves of a tree or mourning her adored dog, Percy, she is ever patient in her observations and open to the teachings contained in the smallest of moments.

Our most precious chronicler of physical landscape, Oliver opens our eyes to the nature within, to its wild and its quiet. With startling clarity, humor, and kindness, A Thousand Mornings explores the mysteries of our daily experience.

Edward says:

"A Thousand Mornings adds to Mary Oliver's reputation as one of the two or three best poets writing today.  Whether the topic is the shore, the idea of nature as prayer and devotion, or dancing, Mary Oliver's choice selection of words leaves the reader reflecting on the simpler things of life, things that may go unnoticed if we don't take the time to stop and pay attention.

'The Gardener' starts with deep philosophical yearnings in these lines, 'Have I lived enough?/Have I loved enough?'  Juxtaposed which these musings is the simplicity which the gardener, 'a simple man' tends to 'his children, the roses.'

 

Several poems are centered around dancing including 'If I Were' and 'Three Things to Remember'. 

The fox, the snake, and the mockingbird take center stage in several other poems.  'The Mockingbird', from a previous volume is one of my favorite poems ever, but this one also is elegant in its beauty.

There is an homage to Bob Dylan and to her dog, and several poems about spring.  Mary Oliver continues building upon the long honored tradition of music in verse to which Keats wrote about so wonderfully in 'Ode to a Nightingale' with the wonderful last lines, 'Was it a vision, or a waking dream?/Fled is that music--Do I wake or sleep?'  The thrush is the impetus for her music from 'In Our Woods, Sometimes a Rare Music' while in 'I Happened to be Standing' it is the wren.

There is a Blake-like innocence expressed in poems like 'Green, Green is My Sister's House' and 'Foolishness?  No It's Not.'  While experience dominates the powerful 'Hum, Hum' and the devastating 'Hurricane'.   She also concerns herself with a disappearing nature in 'The Morning Paper' and 'Extending the Airport Runway.'

 

The first verse of the opening poem is 'I go down to the shore in the morning' and the last verse of the final poem is "\'Pray God I remember this.'

 

All of the poems and lines in between  will make you want to get up a little earlier in the morning to watch the sunrise over the seashore (or mountains), to look out the window at the beautiful clouds and setting sun on your commute, and hope that you, too, will find the words to bring more meaning and beauty to your own life."

Amy S. Recommends....

The Book of Luminous Things "The Book of Luminous Things is an anthology that includes poetry from all around the globe. Because of its diverse subject matter and wide variety of perspectives, this anthology appeals both to those just getting into poetry and long time poetry lovers. In exploring what it means to be human, Milosz repeatedly chooses the voices that will challenge readers, inspiring them to think and to live a worthy life."



The Great Fires
"Jack Gilbert has the unique gift of whispering secrets between the lines of his poetry. Every word, line, and poem is placed precisely in relation to others, to create meaning, arising from all of it. A widely celebrated American poet, Gilbert explores the meaning behind action and change, making claims about love, death, and especially regret, that come from the soul. (Gilbert also just came out with a volume called The Dance Most of All that looks back on his life, but The Great Fires is, in my opinion, his best work.)"

The Wild Iris
"Written from the perspective of various flowers, The Wild Iris is one of Gluck's most carefully crafted volumes. Through this unique lens, readers are able to go beyond the normal bounds of thought, moving directly into nature and the wilder side of being alive."




Otherwise
"This compilation of several of Kenyon's volumes explores how meaning
can be found in the daily, simple, and ordinary. A good place for new
lovers of poetry to begin, Otherwise is highly accessible without a
hint of condescension."

April Kicks Off Poetry Month By Introducing Us To C.D. Wright

Investigative journalism is the poet's realm when C.D. Wright returns to her native Arkansas and examines an explosive incident from the Civil Rights movement. Wright interweaves oral histories, hymns, lists, newspaper accounts, and personal memories--especially those of her incandescent mentor, Mrs. Vititow--with the voices of witnesses, neighbors, police, activists, and black students who were rounded up and detained in an empty public swimming pool. This history leaps howling off the page.

April says:

"I was first introduced to Wright and her fever dream, elegiac sense of poetry in an ill-lit classroom at Western Michigan University--the farthest, I believe, one can get from the sweltering segregated south she conjures. And I have come to deeply appreciate her rendition of an epic poem.

In her latest book, One with Others, Wright creates a sort of visual poetic documentary
of the Civil Rights Movement as it travels through small town Arkansas. The book focuses
on a single event in 1969, Sweet Willie Wine's Walk Against Fear, and the way this walk shook and shaped the Delta town for years. Wine believed 'If white people can ride down their highways with guns, I can walk down the highway unarmed'. But as one reads one learns that peaceful action can wreak its own special sort of havoc. Wright tells the reader the story of Joe Williams, a black man, who (in the days before his deployment to Vietnam) decided to integrate the local bowling alley with a couple of his friends; they parked their truck in the parking lot and walked inside. The sound of the truck being knocked over on its side by the crew of 'Concerned Citizens' reached them as they loosed their solitary bowling ball, walked out, righted the truck, and drove off. The bowling alley was burned down soon after.

It's a book about division between people and the way we have politely paved over it in the last few decades. (The picture on the cover is actually of a pump house, grown over with vines, that once fed water into the local White Only pool; the pool has since become a parking lot.)

One with Others is also an elegy to V., Wright's goombah, her mentor. During Wine's Walk, V. (a white Catholic local woman) carried the water and the shoes in her car. For this action, she was ostracized; friends call it 'crossing over'; she was as good as dead to the community, so she was forced out of her home, her town, even her state. One cannot read this book and feel the loss of never having met V. in person. She is drawn so sharply by what she has on her shelves to what she has chosen to write on the walls of her Hell's Kitchen apartment, that she leaps at the reader from the page, and says, 'You have your life until you use it.'

In the end, this is an epic book. Wright will draw any reader into this account--poet or
not."