Doggerel: Poems About Dogs (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 140004037X ISBN 13: 9781400040377

Publisher: Everyman's Library, 2003

Synopsis

From Chaucer to Billy Collins and from basset hounds to brindle bull terriers, Doggerel presents a robust brood of the most charming verse tributes ever offered to our beloved canine companions.

The rich and assorted cadences of some of the most distinguished poets across the centuries ring out from these pages–from Spenser, Shakespeare, and Pope to Merrill, Merwin, and Muldoon–celebrating pooches of every pedigree and persuasion. Here is Margaret Cavendish’s barking chorus of beagles on the hunt; Elizabeth Bishop’s “Pink Dog” alongside Robyn Selman’s “My Dog is Named for Elizabeth Bishop”; Charles Baxter’s villanelle “Dog Kibble,” whose dog-narrator decides that “Life isn’t meaningless because there’s food”; and the desultory charms of Jane Kenyon’s unleashed dog, nuzzling about on a drizzly afternoon.

From lazy dogs curled up by the fireplace to audacious hounds howling at the moon, from mutts to purebreds, puppies to old dogs, Doggerel is an irresistible gathering of fast and faithful friends.

About this title

About the Author

Carmela Ciuraru is the editor of the anthology First Loves: Poets Introduce the Essential Poems That Captivated and Inspired Them, and the former editor of the Journal of the Poetry Society of America. A graduate of Columbia University's School of Journalism, she lives in New York City.

Reviews

This charming book will expand the audience for poetry because its primary audience is neither poets nor poetry fans but dog lovers, who have included, this collection makes clear, poets of note from Geoffrey Chaucer to Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Editor Ciuraru includes classics, such as Alexander Pope's sardonic epigraph "I am his Highness' dog at Kew; / Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you," beside new works, such as Jill Ciment's witty parody of Sylvia Plath ("I begin to talk like a dog / I think I may well be a dog") and Jane Kenyon's tender "After an Illness, Walking the Dog" ("Wet things smell stronger, / and I suppose his main regret is that / he can sniff just one at a time"). Shakespeare and Kipling, Stevie Smith and Robin Becker--dozens of poets reflect on the joys and sorrows of living with dogs. The section on "The Virtues of Particular Breeds," in which homage is paid St. Bernards, Pomeranians, Irish setters, greyhounds, and other breeds, is especially satisfying. Patricia Monaghan
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Edition details

• Publisher: Everyman's Library
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 140004037X
• ISBN 13: 9781400040377
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256
• Editor: Ciuraru Carmela