Dog Songs : Thirty-five Dog Songs and One Essay

Dog Songs Thirty-five Dog Songs and One Essay

Mary Oliver, 1935-2019

Book - 2013

"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"--

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Subjects
Dogs > Poetry.
Human-animal relationships > Poetry.
Published
New York : Penguin Press 2013.
Language
English
Main Author
Mary Oliver, 1935-2019 (-)
Physical Description
127 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
ISBN
9781594204784
  • How It Begins
  • How It Is with Us, and How It Is with Them
  • If You Are Holding This Book
  • Every Dog's Story
  • The Storm (Bear)
  • Conversations
  • Luke's Junkyard Song
  • Luke
  • Her Grave
  • Benjamin, Who Came from Who Knows Where
  • The Dog Has Run Off Again
  • Holding On to Benjamin
  • The Poetry Teacher
  • Bazougcy
  • Ropes
  • Percy
  • School
  • Little Dog's Rhapsody in the Night
  • Time Passes
  • Untitled
  • Percy Wakes Me
  • The Sweetness of Dogs
  • Percy Speaks While I Am Doing Taxes
  • Percy, Waiting for Ricky
  • Percy (2002-2009)
  • For I Will Consider My Dog Percy
  • The First Time Percy Came Back
  • Ricky Talks About Talking
  • The Wicked Smile
  • The Traveler
  • Show Time
  • A Bad Day
  • Henry
  • How a Lot of Us Become Friends
  • You Never Know Where a Conversation Is Going to Go
  • Dog Talk
  • Note
  • Credits
Review by Library Journal Review

Winner of both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, Oliver (American Primitive) continues to build her legacy with this latest collection of new and selected poems, marking 50 years since her first book of poetry was published. Oliver's keen intuition of the natural world has allowed her to invent a poetic voice distinct to the American landscape and unmatched by that of her contemporaries. Here she is relaxed and at home in poems that read like songs and tell the stories of her companionship-the experience of love, trust, loss, grief, joy-with the animals she's spent a lifetime getting to know. In "Percy, Waiting for Ricky," the image is simple, the language straightforward, and the narrative complete, so the connection among the poet, her lines, and the reader is immediate, clarifying that reading poetry shouldn't be difficult: "Your friend is coming, I say/ to Percy and name a name// and he runs to the door, his/ wide mouth in its laugh-shape,// and waves, since he has one, his tail.// Emerson, I am trying to live"; then: "How// would it be to be Percy, I wonder, not/ thinking, not weighing anything, just running forward." -VERDICT Oliver makes writing poetry look easy, yet she requires your attention. For readers seeking tangible meaning, Oliver gives lines of plenty here.-Annalisa Pesek, Library Journal (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

FIRST TIME PERCY CAME BACK The first time Percy came back he was not sailing on a cloud. He was loping along the sand as though he had come a great way. "Percy," I cried out, and reached to him- those white curls- but he was unreachable. As music is present yet you can't touch it. "Yes, it's all different," he said. "You're going to be very surprised." But I wasn't thinking of that. I only wanted to hold him. "Listen," he said. "I miss that too. And now you'll be telling stories of my coming back and they won't be false, and they won't be true, but they'll be real." And. then, as he used to, he said, "Let's go!" And we walked down the beach together. Excerpted from Dog Songs by Mary Oliver All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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