ANIMALS IN THE HOUSE: 18 SONNETS by Sally Cobau

Name: ANIMALS IN THE HOUSE: 18 SONNETS by Sally Cobau
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Sally Cobau’s “Animals in the House” ably demonstrates her formal and tonal play with the sonnet. Gleeful puns and self-mockery uncover a series of meditations on being a daughter (and granddaughter), wife, and mother. She dances easily between jocund and somber, in the process putting her own stamp on this venerable form.

–O. Alan Weltzien, author of “Into The Khumbu: Poems”

Reading Sally Cobau‘s sonnets in Animals In The House is like entering a hall of mirrors inhabited by ghosts. “Those who have loved me, adored me the very most/have slipped away; they’ve all become ghosts” she writes in Mother. Parents, grandparents, a husband, a child mingle with animals–cats, a weasel, and insects to conjure images of grief and remembrance. This is a collection to be read and re-read.

–Bill Schulz, founder and editor emeritus of Hole In The Head Review. His latest book is Another Psalm.

Many teachers, among other problem solvers, believe in a process they call “serious play.” It sounds oxymoronic but it’s a real thing. Then again, those older, possibly even original problem solvers—poets—have been seriously playing all the while. That’s what Sally Cobau does in this delightful and edgy chapbook, Animals In the House: 18 Sonnets. She puns and teases and misdirects, but always in the service of an uneasy truth, a truth that feels hard-won but earned,deadly serious but still somehow as playful as can be.

–Robert Wrigley

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ANIMALS IN THE HOUSE: 18 SONNETS

by Sally Cobau

Paper

979-8-89990-177-5

2025

In Sally Cobau’s Animals in the House: 18 Sonnets, she writes about many people including her husband, children, parents, grandparents, friends, students, and past loves. She creates an ever-shifting landscape to illustrate the fine line between whimsy and despair. The “characters” in these poems never fully disappear. Even in death, they inhabit a ghostly presence, haunting the old homes. Likewise, the animals that live in the houses provide a comfortable opposition to the human world as they enhance our earthy, beautiful existence.

#poetry #sonnets #family #dogs #nature #animals in the house

Sally Cobau is a writer/teacher/Mom/yoga practitioner/hiker from a tiny town in southwest Montana. Having received her MFA in poetry from the University of Montana in Missoula, she’s had poems published in rattle, Hole in the Head Review, Ekphrastic Review, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Tulip Tree Review, Poems Across the Big Sky, II, and other journals and anthologies. Her poem “Weasel in Winter in the Summer Cottage” received a “Honorable Mention” award in Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Competition, November 2024. She’s also had prose published in Room magazine, the Sun, and Oyster River Pages. When she’s not writing, she’s exploring the mountains near her home in Dillon, Montana. The ranchers, river guides, professors, and dog lovers in this little town form the heart of her work.

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