Little Dogs
CBC Books | Posted: March 8, 2017 3:32 PM | Last Updated: August 30, 2018
Michael Crummey
Twenty years after the publication of his debut, Little Dogs: New and Selected Poems brings together selections from Michael Crummey's first four books of poetry with a significant offering of new work. In this collection, Crummey emerges not only as the master storyteller we know him to be, but also as one of our great poets of connection. Whether reporting from a solitary room or a shared bed, recalling the barbed delirium of adolescence, the subtler negotiations of mature love, or the generational echoes between fathers and sons, these poems are deeply engaged in the business of living with others. Of living with the absence of those who have shaped and sometimes scarred us. Unafraid of confronting the darker corners of desire or of digging into the past to make sense of the present, Crummey has already given us a tremendous body of work.Little Dogs showcases the evolution of one the most distinct and celebrated Canadian writers of his generation. (From House of Anansi)
From the book
Talk exhausted for the night
he walks her home in silence,
comes back to the small wreck
of the meal, empty containers, food scraps,
dishes stacked beside the sink
like beads on an abacus reckoning
an emotional failure's tired repetition.
From Little Dogs: New and Selected by Michael Crummey ©2016. Published by House of Anansi.