Dog show

Dog show Poems

Billy Collins

Book - 2025

"Billy Collins's Dog Show celebrates the joy of our canine best friends, honoring the love we feel for these animals who play vital roles in so many of our lives. In twenty-five poems, Collins distills the many emotions dogs bring us, from the happiness we feel as we watch a dog trot out the door unencumbered by our burdens, to the silliness of holding a dog in our arms as we step on the scale together. Turning his inimitable eye and ear to the complexities of dog behavior, Collins ponders all that these winning creatures give us and what we learn from them about ourselves. For more than four decades Billy Collins has delighted readers with his insight, wit, and clear poetic voice. In Dog Show, "America's favorite poet&q...uot; (Wall Street Journal) illuminates America's favorite pet (sorry, cat lovers). Accompanied by Pamela Sztybel's watercolors that effortlessly depict a dog's humble grace, Dog Show reveals the profound meaning these fetching animals bring to us"-- Provided by publisher.

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Subjects
Dogs > Poetry.
Human-animal relationships > Poetry.
Chiens > Poésie.
Animal poetry.
Genres
Animal poetry
Published
New York, NY : Random House 2025.
Language
English
Main Author
Billy Collins (author)
Other Authors
Pamela Sztybel (illustrator)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
xii, 74 pages : color illustrations ; 20 cm
ISBN
9780593979419
  • Dharma
  • Weighing the dog
  • In praise of ignorance
  • Le chien
  • Another reason I don't keep a gun in the house
  • To a stranger born in some distant country
  • Hundreds of years from now
  • A dog on his master
  • The revenant
  • Walking my seventy-five-year-old dog
  • The day Lassie died
  • Dog years
  • Dog with no name
  • Genius
  • Biographical notes in an anthology of haiku
  • All dressed up
  • The guardian
  • Good news
  • Species
  • Two creatures
  • Magical realism
  • The collar
  • Trying to write a dog poem in a house with two cats
  • Your poem
  • As time goes by
  • The following dogs
Review by Booklist Review

Beloved poet Collins (Water, Water, 2024) swings into dog love in this focused collection. As his is wont, he is seductively imaginative and wryly oblique in contemplation of canines and their relationships with humans. However fanciful his scenarios, they are grounded in close, tender, and bemused observations. He offers a hilarious poem about the neighbor's incessantly barking dog. A dog that has been "put to sleep" has hard words for his former human. A man and a dog living together are "two creatures bound by wonderment." Collins describes an old dog and "the honesty in her eyes," a description beautifully apt for Pamela Sztybel's watercolor illustrations--vibrant, expressive, and colorful portraits that capture each dog's intelligence, attentiveness, joy, and patience. There is nothing sentimental here in word or image. This dog show displays how full of feelings each individual canine is and how precious the friendship of a dog can be. The pleasures here are many for Collins fans, dog lovers, and any reader receptive to clever, poignant, and spirit-lifting poems accompanied by deft, lively, and affectionate paintings.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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