With Dear Dog in hand, one of the most beautiful first books of poetry ever produced, we sit and read in an English garden, guarded by stone lions. Paul Wuensche is a painter as well as a poet and much as he wants to keep the two separate, these poems paint pictures. They are painterly, with gorgeous brushstrokes." Give an old lady a stick/And a wheelchair/And she can sit like Lincoln/Who overlooks that long lake/And the strange obelisk —." The beauty of the painting on the cover tells a lot about the beauty of the work inside. The title poem is about a dog who is gone ("Many dog years/Have whizzed by/Since I had to let you go"), and the poet recalls a garden party on his beloved dog's last week: "We made fun of you I'm afraid,/Gave you a newspaper to read/Dark glasses to wear/And you looked like an old man/Who didn't understand children's games." One reader burst into tears. The poems are far-ranging in subject. History, nature, love, medical procedures, a remote funeral ("Trust me to be late to a funeral/In my own room/On my own laptop"), age, brothers, friendship. Though the poems seem universal or general, with each there is the shock of intimacy. And the intimacy itself is surprising: "I like to watch her/Even at night, when she sits in/Her little office far too late/And fills up neat rows/And columns on spreadsheets....Beside her on the desk/The mug says Best accountant/in the world." Wuensche tell us: "I've always chosen as friends/One or two old enough/to know their lives/Are soon to be rounded off," and then there is a startling image: "Their borrowed flesh/Soon to be returned,/Like a folded prison uniform." He hopes to learn from them "by some silent gesture of the hands -/Like someone modelling a vase in wet clay,/The slim, elegant shape/Of all that matters in life." There is still time for him, and for us. You will find that slim, elegant shape, all that matters in life, in this book.
