Book of Dog: Poems

Influenced by survival lessons from the natural world, Cleopatra Mathis’ Book of Dog traces a harrowing personal journey from hard endings—a divorce, the death of a beloved dog—to the fierce arrival of acceptance and change. All manner of life thrives in these pages–plovers, foxes, the companionable beetle on the bedpost, and the coyotes just beyond her back door. This poet’s discerning eye, focused on the stringent truth of what she sees around her, aims outward and refuses the sentimental. Throughout the search, she is guided by the unbounded faithfulness and wisdom of her noble and comic companions on the path.

Cleopatra Mathis was born and raised in Ruston, Louisiana. The author of six books of poems, her work has appeared widely in anthologies, textbooks, magazines and journals, including The New Yorker, Poetry, American Poetry Review, TriQuarterly, The Southern Review, The Georgia Review, The Made Thing: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern Poetry, and The Extraordinary Tide: Poetry by American Women. Prizes for her work include two National Endowment for the Arts grants, the Jane Kenyon Award, the Peter I.B. Lavan Younger Poets Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Robert Frost Award, and fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, and the New Jersey State Arts Council. Mathis is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College, where she directs the creative writing program. She lives with her family in Hanover, New Hampshire.