Dog Songs

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.

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 Rumpus

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