Title: Dogged Author: Stacy Gnall ISBN: 9781625346421 Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press Published: 2022 Binding: Paperback Language: English Condition Note: New from the publisher Publisher Description: Located somewhere between fiction and reality, the animals of Dogged exist as both "creatures children see in their fevers" and "your one / good dream / in the night." Inhabiting a space apart from time and narrative, the space of the ever-elusive now, these haunting poems probe animal consciousness and desire, as "howls float / like crocuses-- / violet / and half open / to the unknown." Looking to a wide range of high and low visual media, from Steven Spielberg's Jaws and Animal Planet's Fatal Attractions to Peter Paul Rubens's painting of Hercules's dog discovering Tyrian purple, Stacy Gnall ponders human-animal connections and divisions, exploring those moments when human voices blend with "silent" beasts to exceed the limits of language. In Dogged, animals emerge as the highest aspiration of poetry. Around the bend it was reckoned we would never grow old because there were no words for it. I placed my arms soft around the neck of a fawn and she felt no alarm. Speech is where we went wrong. (From "The Wood in Which Things Have No Name")
