Unleashed: Poems by Writers' Dogs - Softcover

Introduction
This project began, as so many literary ventures do, on a drunken New Year's fishing trip down in the Florida Keys. Bob Shacochis, Mark Richard, and Bob's dog, Frank, were ringing in the New Year around a campfire when Frank, an Irish Setter, was moved to verse. The poem, according to Bob, was titled "Wind," and follows in its entirety:

Leaves--I thought they were birds.

This was followed, according to Mark, by an ambitious sequel,
Tangled cassette tapes
behind Tower Records,
I thought it was rats--
it was rats!

One thing we were sure of: part of our happiness derived from pleasing them--the dogs we know, and, it occurred to us, the dogs we didn't know.

So we decided to give to a range of animal welfare agencies every last cent we make on this book.

Actually, we're devoting only half. But still--half!

Think of it as our benefit for the boneless.

So we're not Michael Rosen! What have you done for animals lately?

We have done what vocational guidance counselors recom-mend: find a thing you do anyway, and find a way to make it pay. And for us the surprise was no surprise at all--page after page of love poems.

Jim Shepard
Love Song of Audrey

The door, friends, will not
Open. My kidneys urge
The tedious quotidian.
I have measured out my life
With quiet whines.

I grow old-- I growold--
In endless dogs' manure I'll have rolled.

No! I am not Ch. Dandie Dinsmore,
Nor was meant to be;
Just a beta dog, one that will do
To swell a pack, start a fight or two
Advise the alpha, deferential,
Glad to be of use,
A rear-sniffer, meticulous,
Politic, cautious, a bit obtuse.

Shall I drink from the toilet? Do I dare steal from the plate?
I shall sleep upon their bed, on those nights they return late.
I shall steal away his slipper, then steal away its mate.
--Audrey

Stephen Dunn
Buster's Visitation

I'm a dead dog for real now;
no longer can I rise
from my fakery, alert to commands
I'd come to think of as love,
though I never did obey
as well as Sundown did
or as a truly good dog would.
To play the slave, not be one,
was my code. You understood,
who would play the master.
From my grave in the yard I see now
you had no gift for it, or heart.
Bad dog, you'd say,
so little conviction in your voice.
In seconds you'd be patting my head.
Forgiveness made you happy; I'd tip over
the garbage to he forgiven by you.
Let me tell you it's no life
being dead. I'd give anything
to chase the gulls again.
But clarities come when the body goes.
For whatever it's worth
you should know--you who think so much--
only what's been smelled or felt
gets remembered.
And in the dark earth no doors open,
no one ever comes home.
--Buster

Who would have thought that writers have eloquently poetic dogs, even writers who are famous for prose rather than verse, like Natalie Kusz, Gordon Lish, Bob Shacochis, Cynthia Heimel, and Roy Blount Jr.; even writers you hardly realize are writers, like cartoonist Linda Barry? Well, they do, and here their dogs are, holding forth (thanks to editors Hempel and Shepard's groupings of their efforts) on such subjects of canine contemplation as "Chow," "The Good Life," "Substance Abuse," and "Theology" (Kathryn Walker's Flea posits a Big Dog creator; Mark Doty's Beau practices Zen). Some of these pups are even able to address us from the grave, including the inevitable nonconformist, John Irving's Marrow, who opines that "All dogs prefer prose." Tricked out with more than a few dual-author portraits (pick of the pack--Andrew Hudgins and Rosie, giving good tongue), this is as endearing and amusing--as earthy, too--as poetry collections get. Ray Olson