Black Dog Songs is Lisa Jarnot’s third volume of poetry. Decidedly lyrical, these poems move through pastures and politics to the quick of thought. What emerges is a catalog of loves and laments: “Just the eldergrass and him, the fog, unpoliced and safe inside the train, the thoughts of rain, Apollo, and the sun . . .”

“Gertrude Blake pirouettes in a fun house of auditory mirrors: one reflects will be become wOZ; another a lamb post-suffrage; in a third The Blues remember hills. Through a mirage of defensible oases in Mother Goose light words swap parts and dance as Churchill’s cloud wanders down attracted by the music.” —Tom Raworth

“I find there’s always the act of source implicit in her language. However adrift in linguistic aesthetics, in sheer music-of-rhythmed-sounds, her words are never severed from the means that engendered them; and the consequent meanings are never detached from the meditative drama of each whole poem.” —Stan Brakhage, Chicago Review