Dog Songs: Poems

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In her emotionally eloquent poetry collection Dog Songs, Mary Oliver brings the sheer gentleness and genius of her craft all over again. Tim is a British printmaker who has mastered various techniques - silkscreens, monotypes, etchings - to convey the story in space. There is a common, calm refrain: to reach an animal, we must "get rid of fret" (as Lessing remarkably put it.

Writing of the reciprocal displays of affection between humans and their best friends, Oliver describes: "'Tell me you love me,' he says.Dog Songs ( public library) collects her most soul-stirring poems and short prose celebrating that special human-canine relationship and what it reveals about the meaning of our own lives — a beautiful manifestation of Oliver’s singular sieve for extracting from the particularities of the poetic subject the philosophical universalities of the human condition to illuminate what it means to live a good life, a full life, a life of purpose and presence. But sometimes dreams are dark and wild and creepy and I wake and am afraid, though I don’t know why. The dog would remind us of the pleasures of the body with its graceful physicality, and the acuity and rapture of the senses, and the beauty of forest and ocean and rain and our own breath. Dog Songs begins a choice, a selection - a single moment out of which we move forward anew, accompanied. Percy needed love in the wakeful hours of the night and was "wild with the okayness" of being formidably cuddled and loved by human hands.

Like Lessing, Oliver listens, reads, hears across language and species, and transports herself to the "still magical first world. Throughout, the many dogs of Oliver's life merge as fellow travelers and as guides, uniquely able to open our eyes to the lessons of the moment and the joys of nature and connection. Songs are melodies that capture the dancing, vibrant, binding love that animals pull from us and give to us. It is little remembered, but it has become one of those pockets of nostalgia that makes one wistful. Dog Songs includes visits with old friends, like Oliver's most beloved dog Percy, and introduces still others in poems of love and laughter, heartbreak and grief.Oliver, who ensured her employment contract included room for the dog; Oliver, who rebuilt worn fences and replaced chewed ropes; Oliver, who compared love for a dog to music. The dog would remind us of the pleasures of the body with its graceful physicality, the acuity and rapture of the senses, and the beauty of forest and ocean and rain and our own breath. But even more powerful is the other direction of that affirmative affection — the wholehearted devotion of dogs, who love us unconditionally and in the process teach us to love; in letting us see ourselves through their eyes, they help us believe what they see, believe that we are worthy of love, that we are love.

First edition, first printing, signed by the author on the first blank, of this volume of Mary Oliver's much-loved dog poems.These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. TLDR: You're safe — there are no nefarious "third parties" lurking on my watch or shedding crumbs of the "cookies" the rest of the internet uses.

if you are holding this book you should know that of all the sights I love in this world — and there are plenty — very near the top of the list is this one: dogs without leashes. We own dogs as far as we beg them not to run away, a supplication they might listen to or not, "depending on a million things. Dog Songs showcases the power and depth of the human-animal exchange, a perspective with extraordinary vision. I have seen Ben place his nose meticulously into the shallow dampness of a deer's hoofprint and shut his eyes as if listening.I have no staff, no interns, not even an assistant — a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood.