Canis familiaris: man's best friend. Dogs have followed at our heels from our earliest hunts and have remained our faithful companions through thick and thin, triumph and disaster. At every age of our history and at every stage of our lives, we look to dogs for friendship, love, labor, understanding, admiration, and compassion. And yet they give us far more than that.

"If you look a dog / in the eye / too intently, / it may recite / an astounding poem / to you," Jean Genet said.

From William Shakespeare to Clarice Lispector, our most beloved writers and poets have been receptive to canine inspiration, and Dog Poems brings together their wisdom, their wit, their insight, their empathy, and--of course--their sense of humor. Mary Oliver's "Every Dog's Story" looks at life through a dog's eyes. Dogs speak archly in Pope's "On the Collar of a Dog." They lap up praise in Stevie Smith's "O Pug " and Dorothy Parker's "Verse for a Certain Dog." And in Elizabeth Bishop's "Pink Dog" and Lawrence Ferlinghetti's "Dog," we contemplate our four-legged friends, and in doing so, our own fragile and compromised humanity. Ezra Pound muses, Pablo Neruda mourns, and Dylan Thomas sings. Gertrude Stein's famous quip--"I am I because my little dog knows me"--rings true: in understanding their dogs, these writers come a little closer to themselves. And we're all the better for it.