Dog Songs

by Mary Oliver

Overview

“The popularity of [Dog Songs] feels as inevitable and welcome as a wagging tail upon homecoming.” —The Boston Globe
 
Mary Oliver’s Dog Songs is a celebration of the special bond between human and dog, as understood through the poet’s relationships to the canines that have accompanied her daily walks, warmed her home, and inspired her work. Oliver’s poems begin in the small everyday moments familiar to all dog lovers, but through her extraordinary vision, these observations become higher meditations on the world and our place in it.

Dog Songs includes visits with old friends, like Oliver’s beloved Percy, and introduces still others in poems of love and laughter, heartbreak and grief. 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. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143125839
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/29/2015
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	144
Sales rank:	12,981
Product dimensions:	7.60(w) x 5.00(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Born in a small town in Ohio, Mary Oliver published her first book of poetry in 1963 at the age of 28. Over the course of her long career, she has received numerous awards. Her fourth book, American Primitive, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1984. She has led workshops and held residencies at various colleges and universities, including Bennington College, where she held the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching.

Read an Excerpt

FIRST TIME PERCY CAME BACK

The first time Percy came back he was not sailing on a cloud.
those white curls—
of my coming back and they won’t be false, and they won’t be true,
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Dog Songs"
by .
Copyright © 2013 Mary Oliver.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

How It Begins 1

How It Is with Us, and How It Is with Them 3

If You Are Holding This Book 5

Every Dog's Story 7

The Storm (Bear) 9

Conversations 11

Luke's Junkyard Song 15

Luke 19

Her Grave 23

Benjamin, Who Came from Who Knows Where 31

The Dog Has Run Off Again 33

Holding On to Benjamin 35

The Poetry Teacher 39

Bazougcy 41

Ropes 43

Percy 47

School 49

Little Dog's Rhapsody in the Night 51

Time Passes 53

Untitled 55

Percy Wakes Me 57

The Sweetness of Dogs 61

Percy Speaks While I Am Doing Taxes 63

Percy, Waiting for Ricky 65

Percy (2002-2009) 67

For I Will Consider My Dog Percy 69

The First Time Percy Came Back 77

Ricky Talks About Talking 79

The Wicked Smile 83

The Traveler 87

Show Time 89

A Bad Day 93

Henry 95

How a Lot of Us Become Friends 101

You Never Know Where a Conversation Is Going to Go 103

Dog Talk 107

Note 123

Credits 125

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

The New York Times
“Dog Songs....is a sweet golden retriever of a book that curls up with the reader.”

Editorial Reviews

Dog Songs . . . is a sweet golden retriever of a book that curls up with the reader.” —The New York Times
 
“Oliver . . . is one of our most adored poets, and a longtime lover of dogs. The popularity of [Dog Songs] feels as inevitable and welcome as a wagging tail upon homecoming.” —The Boston Globe

“Mary Oliver is a canine lover par excellence. Her combo of woman’s best friend and poetry is utterly irresistible.” —Oprah.com

“Mary Oliver’s Dog Songs is, plainly put, a lovely and accessible book of poems.” —The Rumpu

“Oliver’s capacity for simple ecstasy in response to the natural world remains. The new Dog Songs turns . . . material about canines into something meaningful.” —Time Out

“The set of poems all feature dogs, a species much beloved by the poet; she writes of her canine companions with as much awe and reverence as she does other miraculous beasts and natural phenomena. They read as embodiments of the natural order, comprehending the cycle of life and death in ways no human can.” —Bust Magazine 

“Dog Songs 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.” —Brain Pickings

“The collection invites us to linger awhile in the pure happiness Oliver feels toward dogs, most notably, her beloved dog Percy . . . For Oliver, nature is our teacher and dogs some of the best professors.” —Bookish, The Houston Chronicle

“Renowned for her love of nature, Ms. Oliver writes exquisite, lyrical poems that . . . remind the reader of how much there is to love in this world. Nowhere is this love more evident than in Oliver’s latest collection, Dog Songs . . . These poems will make you smile, laugh, cry and nod your head in delighted agreement.” —The Bark

From the Publisher

09/15/2013
Winner of both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, Oliver (American Primitive) continues to build her legacy with this latest collection of new and selected poems, marking 50 years since her first book of poetry was published. Oliver's keen intuition of the natural world has allowed her to invent a poetic voice distinct to the American landscape and unmatched by that of her contemporaries. Here she is relaxed and at home in poems that read like songs and tell the stories of her companionship—the experience of love, trust, loss, grief, joy—with the animals she's spent a lifetime getting to know. In "Percy, Waiting for Ricky," the image is simple, the language straightforward, and the narrative complete, so the connection among the poet, her lines, and the reader is immediate, clarifying that reading poetry shouldn't be difficult: "Your friend is coming, I say/ to Percy and name a name// and he runs to the door, his/ wide mouth in its laugh-shape,// and waves, since he has one, his tail.// Emerson, I am trying to live"; then: "How// would it be to be Percy, I wonder, not/ thinking, not weighing anything, just running forward." VERDICT Oliver makes writing poetry look easy, yet she requires your attention. For readers seeking tangible meaning, Oliver gives lines of plenty here.—Annalisa Pesek, Library Journal

Library Journal