Invisible Dogs
Published on 1. September 2013
102 pages
978-1-926829-95-1 (ISBN)
Description
Virtuosic poems tracking two intertwined themes: the breakdown of an obsessive love affair and the vicissitudes of middle age.
Invisible Dogs, Dempster's fourteenth collection, is a complex but deeply coherent hymn to the difficult business of staying alive. This is a book for when it hurts so bad you hope you'll die and are afraid you won't-not because it offers consolation or the promise of a new dawn, but because it so compellingly documents the plain, hard, ungraceful, stumbling grief of the matter, and meets it with rare self-knowledge, wry humour, and an unornamented determination to go on living.
Dempster's metaphors are like hairpin turns taken at breakneck speed. He has nerves of steel when it comes to self-examination, and it's this relentless honesty and the emotional torque it induces that keep the voice on the road.
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Barry Dempster is the author of fourteen poetry collections, a novel, two volumes of short stories and a children's book. He teaches writing workshops from Banff, Alberta to Santiago, Chile. His most recent books include Love Outlandish, Ivan's Birches, Blue Wherever and Dying a Little. A new novel is forthcoming from Pedlar Press in November 2013.
Content
- Intro
- THERE'S A HOLE IN THE WORLD
- COLD
- ON HIS WAY TO BONES
- OBSESSED
- THE OYSTER CAFE
- NO-SHOW
- ARE THERE VIPERS IN BANGKOK?
- INTIMACY
- THE PINK SOCK
- GOD FALLS INTO YOUR STRIDE
- MORE THAN YOU REALIZE
- VIGILANCE, A CAT'S STARE
- CHICKADEES
- THE LISTENER
- LITTLE LIGHT
- SHE SAID/HE SAID
- 1/ VIVIAN FOREST
- 2/ ANY MIRACLE
- 3/ SECOND SKIN
- 4/ DISTANCE
- 5/ A FEW BONES LEFT
- 6/ SOMETHING OF HERSELF
- 7/ CLICK
- 8/ IRRETRIEVABLE
- 9/ NEW DAY
- 10/ OVER YOU
- 11/ BLOWN AWAY
- 12/ DOORS
- 13/ AROMATIC
- 14/ LANDMARKS
- 15/ HIM
- 16/ DAILY
- 17/ STARTING OVER
- 18/ SHINING
- 19/ GO ON LOVING
- ROCKY VARIATIONS
- MOUNT RUNDLE
- KILL SITE
- COMPANY
- BEAR STORY
- ROCKY VARIATIONS
- WISH LIST
- A PIECE OF YOURSELF
- THE WAY DOWN
- SKUNK HOUR
- GHOST STORY
- GOING UNDER
- GOING UNDER
- HOUSE AND HOME
- BITTERSWEET
- GROIN
- GOD-SIZED ACHE
- A CRYING POEM
- AIMLESS
- BARE TREES
- WALKING AWAY
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- about the author
