Dog Music: Poetry about Dogs

I wanted to find some new ways to think about our dog, new ways to relate to him, and I wanted to read some good poems and maybe learn how to write a poem about a dog myself. The book has given me all that I asked and more. The poems are often very funny or very moving or both, and they are carefully observed accounts of dogs and dogs or dogs and people, and they are often tributes for a debt to a particular dog that is hard to tally and probably harder to pay back.

The editors have created an important, moving collection, miles above similar books. The sum of its parts creates a complex vision of the profound relationship we have with our dogs. I read poems like Gerald Stern's "The Dog," and Jim Simmerman's "Fetch" over and over. I read them to unsuspecting friends on the phone long distance. My gorgeous Wally, a Norfolk Terrier, died in December of 1998. These poems, in the way that all great poetry can express and trigger feelings that expand our experience of our own lives, have made even my sorrow richer.