Black Dog Day by Brian Burt

When news cycles blister, when our phones light up announcing riots and deadly new strains, how can we locate our equilibrium? In Black Dog Day, Brian Burt writes his way to an answer: “My black dog leads me down the snow-packed path.”  Fortunately, the reader can follow as both poet and hound seek out a way of being “pure present tense” amidst the mess and beauty of the world. Along the path we “bless our web of wind…that weft of crows,” we note the splendor of the sugar maples and a bird’s “two-toned call: one note up, one note down.” With delicate description and intimate music, Burt has crafted a book of modern pastorals, reminding us that even in the time of iPhones and plagues, the land and the word can still replenish the spirit.

–Kirun Kapur, editor, Beloit Poetry Journal, and author of Women in the Waiting Room

In Brian Burt’s clear, attentive poems, the big black dog who accompanies the poet (and us) is a steady ambassador for the “pure present tense,” pushing open a door to bound down the stairs each early morning, setting in motion a rhythm that resonates internally throughout the day. Attuned to the balance between self and dog, Burt reveals a deep comfort that comes from the recognition of the largely unseen life that exists alongside the noise of our human lives, such as “the trellis of connection” made by birdsong, “maple branches lacing/upwards with nothing/but sky and crow between,” and the “thing elusive as a scent/that only dogs can smell.” While an examination of the daily self can be unsparing, it is the black dog’s nonjudgmental—and happily oblivious—presence that tugs the poet back to a peaceful state. At the core of these eloquent poems are tenderness and gratitude for the natural world the black dog guides us through, one where “nothing here belongs to us.”

–Amy M. Clark, author of Roundabout and Stray Home

Quiet and thoughtful, and always surprising, the poems in Brian Burt’s Black Dog Day mark the ways that every season “builds moment to moment / an only-moving, an always moving / trellis of connection…” Just as care for a dog puts us closer to nature, Burt shows us that the daily cycles of life and love, of routine walks in the woods, even simple family dinners hold all we need to celebrate what’s dear and fleeting.

–Mike Perrow, author of Five Sequences for the Country at Night