Dog Songs: Poems

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A dog can never tell you what she knows from the smells of the world, but you know, watching her, that you know almost nothing. No Voyage, and Other Poems Dent (New York, NY), expanded edition, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1965. Parini, Jay (February 15, 2019). "Mary Oliver obituary". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved February 18, 2019.

Mary Oliver is not only one of the sagest and most beloved poets of our time, a recipient of a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, but is also among literary history’s greatest pet-lovers. 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. If You Are Holding This Book” is the poem that reveals the theme of this collection ~ “ dogs without leashes” (5) ~ and prepares for the thesis of the essay at the end of the book.Dog is one of the messengers of that rich and still magical first world. 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 the forest and ocean and rain and our own breath. There is not a dog that romps and runs but we learn from him.” From “The Summer Beach.” Mostly, it is about a dog. It is also about choices. About what we value, as a society and as individuals. And about education. And materialism. About wildness, about love. You may not agree, you may not care, but 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. She won the Christopher Award and the L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award for her piece House of Light (1990), and New and Selected Poems (1992) won the National Book Award. [1] [9] Oliver's work turns towards nature for its inspiration and describes the sense of wonder it instilled in her. "When it's over," she says, "I want to say: all my life / I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms." ("When Death Comes" from New and Selected Poems (1992)) Her collections Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems (1999), Why I Wake Early (2004), and New and Selected Poems, Volume 2 (2004) build the themes. The first and second parts of Leaf and the Cloud are featured in The Best American Poetry 1999 and 2000, [10] and her essays appear in Best American Essays 1996, 1998, and 2001. [6] Oliver was the editor of the 2009 edition of Best American Essays. Poetic identity [ edit ]

An argument arises for dogs, if not pets in general, as necessity versus the craze of the external and solitary world. And by “Every Dog’s Story” it can be assumed a book of reflection/meditation by a loved American poet is what we as Reader have as addition to the body of Mary Oliver’s work: I suggest you get your paws on Dog Songs to enjoy alone or while nuzzling with your favorite furry one(s) by your side.Simple enough. Unchallenging and light. In “How It Is With Us, And How It Is With Them,” a second possible theme (apart from the book being about dogs) appears for discussion: It would be a mistake to think that the words we write are any more meaningful than the “large, exuberant letters” Bear wrote in the snow. In fact, some might argue they are less so. For when we write, we so often do so to express abstract concepts, interpretations of reality, opinions, and ideas. The beginning of the collection takes its time stepping to its most fully realized self. In “How It Begins” the book, well, begins with the first lines: Because of the dog’s joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift. It is not the least reason why we should honour as well as love the dog of our own life, and the dog down the street, and all the dogs not yet born. What would the world be like without music or rivers or the green and tender grass? What would this world be like without dogs?

As a dog lover, I enjoyed these poems. Though my experience of the dogs I have loved is very different from Oliver’s, these poems reveal, not just the personalities and escapades of Oliver’s dogs, but insight into the nature of dogs. They are universal poems that go beyond Percy and Ben and the other dogs immortalized here. Dogs are our closest companions, our most beloved friends. But paradoxically, it is the wildness of the dog, the apartnessof them - the coming free from their leash and the running away - that captures Oliver's heart. But I want to extol not the sweetness nor the placidity of the dog, but the wilderness out of which he cannot step entirely and from which we benefit. For the wilderness is our first home too, and in our wild ride into modernity with all its concerns and problems we also need all the suitable attachments to that origin that we can keep or restore. The dog is one of the messengers of the rich and still magical first world. 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. There is not a dog that romps and runs but we learn from him. This book is awesome for dog lovers – nice little set of poems that Oliver has collected from her many collections. I am not sure if it was as great as the other two collections I have read by her, but still wonderful. But our pets invite us to care not only for them, but for all animals. Their call, and Mary Oliver’s, are clear. We are invited to join the world of life again, to take our “place in the family of things.”A dog comes to you and lives with you in your own house, but you do not, therefore, own her, as you do not own the rain, or the trees, or the laws which pertain to them … a b " "Poetry: Past winners & finalists by category". The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved April 8, 2012. The poems stretch forward contagiously from here on, with tones of the human experience directly expressed, as in “The Sweetness of Dogs”: Here is Mary Oliver reading “Little Dog’s Rhapsody in the Night,” one of my favourite poems in the entire book: https://vimeo.com/76060890