In Dead Dog Poems, Lynne Schmidt creates a new grief country and offers us a map to explore it. Here, the language and landscapes are intimate, unflinching, and unapologetic as she asks: how do we accept and process the loss of a pet who has remained more steadfast and loving than our humans have? Schmidt shows us we must find “grace to brace for the inevitable” and gratefully accept this new citizenship of loss. Her astounding collection shows us how to savor even the sorrow and finding the courage to love again even as you grieve: “I wish my puppy could talk to my depression/The way she talks to a trash can:” If Ellen Bass’s The Human Line and Mary Oliver’s Dog Songs had a baby, Dead Dog Poems would be it. Anyone who has ever lost a beloved pet should read this book.”
–Joan Kwon Glass, Poet Laureate of Milford, Connecticut
“These poems are stark, beautiful, sad, and sometimes difficult, but ultimately very much worth it – just like the short lovely lives of the pets entrusted to us to care for.”
–Amber Sparks, author of And I Do Not Forgive You
Dead Dog Poems is unlike anything I’ve read before. Lynne Schmidt captures the experience of pet illness, loss, and grief in every single line. Her poem “Road Map” begins, “There is no road map / that suggests turn left at cancer / and right on chemotherapy street,” but somehow this collection is a road map, and a necessary one. I’m privileged to have read it, and I’m heartened that this guidebook to grief is out in the world.
–Shaindel Beers, author of Secure Your Own Mask, finalist for the Oregon Book Award
Anyone who has been saved by the companionship of their dog – or dogs – will see themselves in these pages. Through the lens of her relationship with her pack, Lynne Schmidt examines family, trauma, abuse, and loss, recognizing her love for her rescue dogs, survivors themselves, is a constant in an otherwise chaotic and cruel world. As she writes, “When the vet consoles me, saying, / She was sick before she was yours, / All I hear is / She was yours.” This collection is a reminder of what a gift it is to belong to each other, even briefly.
–Ruth Awad, author of Set to Music a Wildfire
“I read this book with both my youngest puppy and my oldest furry soulmate asleep on my lap. More than once they were woken by tears falling from my cheeks and landing on their tiny perfect heads. The poems in this collection speak to one of my life’s biggest fears, but do so in a way that roots me deeper in love, that wakes me further to the courage involved in choosing to become family with those whose lifespans are far shorter than our own. I know there is no such thing as learning how to grieve, but this book, for me, is a sacred road map to feeling everything. It unleashes both devastating and tender truths, and in doing so, sets us free to run towards the wilderness of our own growing hearts.”
–Andrea Gibson
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