Ghost Dogs

Ghost Dogs, Dion O'Reilly's fine first poetry collection, will haunt you the way art should. Bristling with pain, wit, desire, and tenderness, these poems investigate not only "the daily harms" of an abusive childhood, but the deep solace non-human animals can offer. In vivid, sensual detail, O'Reilly conjures her companions: mastiffs with "sad, sagging faces," a beloved chestnut mare's "glowing coat," a green parrot who has managed to "fill a space in the chaos." She doesn't sugarcoat or flinch from suffering--her own or others'--she transforms it. Line by crackling line, image by unforgettable image. Contemplating her bruised knees in the poem "Given," she asks, "Is there a way to make it wonderful?" Ghost Dogs provides us an answer, a resounding yes. --Ellen Bass

A coastal California ranch, a house full of mastiffs, a white hawk, a young woman running naked through the neighborhood at night. These poems dole out humor, surprise, and pathos in equal measure. O'Reilly's Ghost Dogs takes us to Alaska, the burn ward, the not-so-distant past. Even to the future. These poems are a testament to a wild brand of survival, of how to endure until you arrive, finally, at a place where you can "live clean, /untouched and redeemed." --Danusha Laméris

Dion O'Reilly's Ghost Dogs is polished, powerful, and deeply rooted in the landscape of the Pacific West. The poems tell a compelling story of a life with many challenges, exalted by a sense of the marvelous. The writing sings with astonishingly fresh imagery and fully experienced emotion. Ghost Dogs gives a summation of a life, with the poet finding wells of emotion in the most unlikely places--a pig about to be shot by a butcher or a thumb sucked into adulthood. There is a fierce appetite in this book, a hunger for the depths and heights of human experience, described with abandon mixed with great refinement. --Zack Rogow