Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Monologue Dogs
    Monologue Dogs
    Monologue Dogs
    Ebook71 pages28 minutes

    Monologue Dogs

    By Méira Cook

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Monologue Dogs is a series of contemporary dramatic monologues. Every "voice" has its own imagined rhythm and nuances of poetic speech that are as vibrant, wayward, mournful, errant, or unruly as the characters who speak. Setting the lyric against street argot, archaic language against deflating or ironic feints, metaphors against declarative sentences, the elegiac against the ribald, classical or literary allusions against anachronistic references, these monologues reflect our own disordered subjectivities. In the words of Molly Peacock: "Read her for a fresh, contemporary and knowing sensibility -- not to mention an unforgettable sense of humour."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrick Books
    Release dateMay 15, 2015
    ISBN9781771313582
    Monologue Dogs
    Author

    Méira Cook

    MÉIRA COOK is the award-winning author of the novels Once More With Feeling; The House on Sugarbush Road, which won the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award; and Nightwatching, which won the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction. She has also published five poetry collections, most recently Monologue Dogs, which was shortlisted for the 2016 Lansdowne Prize for Poetry and for the 2016 McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award. She has won the CBC Poetry Prize and the inaugural Walrus Poetry Prize. She has served as Writer in Residence at the University of Manitoba’s Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture, and the Winnipeg Public Library. Born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa, she now lives in Winnipeg.

    Read more from Méira Cook

    Related to Monologue Dogs

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Until The Sea Closed Over Us And The Light Was Gone

      Jul 1, 2020

      —Dante, Canto XXVI But if the truth is dreamed of toward the morning—El Paso Although it was really last summer’s song,all this summer Despacito played on as slower then I turned myself to gazeupon Juarez. The summer everything hurts my eyes, a dozen

      6 min read

    • Article

      Five Plague Octets

      May 1, 2022

      The wolf plans to live with the lamb, the leopardto lie with the goat. It’s written in stoneand onion skin. The lion will eat straw,the snake will eat dust. It’s prophesiedin ball point on the palm of your hand.The date has been fixed for the wedding

      1 min read

    • Article

      As the World Collapses

      Jul 27, 2017

      As the World Collapses
      7 min read

    • Article

      Spell

      Apr 25, 2018

      Spell
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Island (catullus 64)

      Mar 1, 2022

      Back then the evergreens tumbled downriverfrom the glaze-white runoff to the boot-stirred puddlesof amber young men who fulfilled our destiny,who clambered into ships, on horses, and in wagonspainting the newfound landscapes ours.Our calling was nobl

      9 min read

    • Article

      Six Poems

      Jan 1, 2023

      Magic lights near, far,everywhere.Off the kitchen, upthe skinny flight of stairsto the FIRE door, stairwellto the roof, this spot. Tiny lights, tiny tiny lights—Elijah, Sparrow, Shira, Dan.Rust and peeling door-paintin plum, from one dark street toan

      2 min read

    • Article

      Cul-de-Sac

      Dec 1, 2021

      That old rage for order: how my father drove a square mouthed mower over-and-back, over-and-back, each row of neatly trimmed grass cut just like he told his barber: boy’s short, regular. O pioneer, taming this joke bit of prairie, no bindweed or dog

      5 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems by Rohan Chhetri

      Sep 8, 2020

      All summer the half voice lurked behind me & I played deaf for days for to live To not write about it to use my body Part the river’s flesh to operate Machinery is human too to love & for once stay awake through it all. Now it comes like the deer sle

      3 min read

    • Article

      Six Poems

      Feb 28, 2023

      Dear C, At first Virgil’s poem is quite dull; equivocalnames of products at The Container Store: Elfa White Medium Drawer, Mesh NarrowRolling Cart (Medium Solution), Narrow Classic Mesh Box and the number of pirouetting starseach product attained. An

      5 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      May 1, 2019

      “My arm is so brown and so beautiful,” is a thought I haveas I’m about to turn off the lamp and go to sleep.I look at it a moment in the soft glow, and see it, briefly,as though it belonged to someone else. A reddishkind of brown, like a toasted almo

      7 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jul 1, 2023

      Jester-necked pile of ideasfattening by the cutting board.I have known the summer wall,it says slowly. The hillside facessouth into the valley.Dew on the tomato plants.Anything that grows, swarms,bunches itself against a stayand cannot stay. The vine

      4 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Jan 1, 2021

      I learned the world through the bottoms of my feet, barein the creeks of summer, stepping on pebbles, the squidgeof moss between my toes. On hot asphalt, the hop and skipover cracks, feet already toughened by bramble, dirt, the pricklyground of pine

      4 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      May 1, 2022

      —after Gerrit van Honthorst’s “Samson and Delilah,” c. 1621 They’ve made a monster of me, marring my namefor eternity. I’m not Delilah,but Laila. I loved him. Each night, in bed, after our bodies became one body, he would succumb to sleep, resting hi

      3 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Jan 1, 2022

      The painting is of a door, its wood so warpedwith moisture it cannot close. It stays ajar leaving a sliver of light—enough to suggestsomething sweet and almost unreachable behind the door—and you sit in yourroom working on the bills or those comforti

      4 min read

    • Article

      Sweet Fantasy

      Nov 20, 2021

      Sweet Fantasy
      8 min read

    • Article

      Drifting Thoughts

      Nov 26, 2019

      Drifting Thoughts
      5 min read

    • Article

      Portrait Of An Island

      Jun 3, 2021

      AN ISLAND provides refuge for refugees. Their roofs, tablecloths, and bedsheets wave from the port’s breeze. Temporarily permanent, adjacent to the water, each tent kneels behind the mayor’s office and in front of a tenth-century castle. The locals p

      4 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Jan 1, 2020

      How slow is all of this dying? Across the county linea fossil in the making, off-road exhaling last lightin nightmud. A small cat in a steel trap. Pendulous sparrows preen. Holding on for the last bluedark nightwe ate fruited scabs off each other’s m

      4 min read

    • Article

      A Tale Of Two Christmases

      Dec 17, 2020

      A Tale Of Two Christmases
      7 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems by Phillip B. Williams

      Dec 15, 2017

      The masters are yet dead. Wanting to be human,I tried to rewrite The Waste Land. The canon’s reachcasts ruinous light. The masters’ pens breachthis page where, above, my own hand spectates. Babylonrisen, exorcism in reverse, whose nature upended now?

      6 min read

    • Article

      Death

      Mar 1, 2020

      Kids already asleep, the grownups sit out on the deck,a few empty cans, an open bottle of wine on the table, I’m sure, and stacked paper plates with half-eaten buns and dirty napkins.From my backyard next door, I can hear them, the living, chatting.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Diaspora Sonnets

      Sep 1, 2022

      The old men drink their spritzers and gossipunder awnings. Red hued and blustery, like two roosters on the side of a road.Skyward they crane their necks and laugh, sometimes they wonder about kings and future kingsand how the muscles peer from their

      2 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Jul 1, 2023

      People let themselves down so hard they took to clappingwhen the plane lands. Sometimes even at the creditsof a movie. Their funerals turned out to be for the livingall along. You wouldn’t know how much they hatedcrowded trains by the way they kept b

      3 min read

    • Article

      Poetry of Place

      May 30, 2023

      Poetry of Place
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Spaces In-between

      Jul 15, 2020

      We were just off South Cape when a voice came out of the long-wave radio and announced that Tasmania had closed its borders. Everyone stopped moving. Eyes like plates, jaws dropped to the floor. Coffee mugs suspended mid-flight. The whole catastrophe

      3 min read

    • Article

      Holiday For One

      Mar 24, 2023

      Holiday For One
      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Monologue Dogs

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Monologue Dogs - Méira Cook

      Monologue Dogs

        Monologue Dogs

      Méira Cook

      Brick Books

      Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

      Cook, Méira, 1964–, author

      


      Monologue dogs / Méira Cook.

      Poems.

      Issued in print and electronic formats.

      ISBN 978-1-77131-358-2

      I. Title.

      PS8555.O567M65 2015          C11’.54           C2014-907984-2

      We acknowledge the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, and the Ontario Arts Council for their support of our publishing program.

      The author photo was taken by Robyn Shapiro.

      Cover image by Natalie Waldburger.

      Print design and layout by Marijke Friesen.

      Brick Books

      431 Boler Road, Box 20081

      London, Ontario N6K 4G6

      www.brickbooks.ca

      ABOUT THE BOOK

      Monologue Dogs is a series of contemporary dramatic monologues. Every voice has its own imagined rhythm and nuances of poetic speech that are as vibrant, wayward, mournful, errant, or unruly as the characters who speak. Setting the lyric against street argot, archaic language against deflating or ironic feints, metaphors against declarative sentences, the elegiac against the ribald, classical or literary allusions against anachronistic references, these monologues reflect our own disordered subjectivities. In the words of Molly Peacock: Read her for a fresh, contemporary and knowing sensibility—not to mention an unforgettable sense of humour.

      for my Stereo Boys

      (( for Misha and Shai ))

      CONTENTS

      Bone Shop

      The Hunger Artists

      Mongrel Heart

      Crooked

      Bone Shop

      THE DEVIL’S ADVOCATE

      My lords and ladies, gentlemen of the jury—

      when you hear hoofbeats, assume horses, not zebras.

      This is true in almost all parts of the world

      except the African savannah, where it is safer

      to assume zebras. Also eland, giraffes, herds

      of this and that. In India, assume cows; in Spain,

      bulls, matadors with their sun-blurred hooves.

      In Tuscany, angels; in Kingdom Come, horses again,

      pale quartets of Wish You Were Here.

      My client sends his regrets. He is busy

      falling through blank verse for all eternity, while a mere afternoon

      passes its shadow over us. The sun moves from one window

      of the courthouse to the next, and then it’s tea time.

      One sugar or two? Perhaps a bun. Stretch

      and yawn and back we go. I submit

      for your perusal Exhibit A.

      This is a map of the world, of God, and of everything.

      Above is heaven, below is hell—

      the future is to the right,

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1