The Beaten Pathos

The Beaten Pathos is a manuscript of poems written by a shelter dog--a shelter dog whose distrust of both his reader-dogs and himself amplifies his need to communicate. More often than not, the result is a poem borne of an imagination both ostentatiously loud and cutting at an oblique angle, like a miter saw. Additionally, a handful of poems are muted and cool (like Miles Davis' trumpet), and, consequently, more direct in their expression of the poet's emotional vulnerability. Whether the poems in this manuscript are of the miter-saw or trumpet variety, their speakers--although frequently not equipped to do so--are earnest about getting and/or making even the most sideways of things right.