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    Monologue Dogs
    Monologue Dogs
    Monologue Dogs
    Ebook71 pages28 minutes

    Monologue Dogs

    By Méira Cook

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    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

    MEIRA COOK’s first novel, The House on Sugarbush Road, won the 2013 McNally Robinson Manitoba Book of the Year Award and was a nominee for the Winnipeg Public Library’s On The Same Page competition. Her poetry won first place in the CBC Literary Awards in 2007, garnered a Manitoba Publishing Award (a “Maggie”), and has been featured in Winnipeg Transit’s “Poetry in Motion” program. Two of her poems were on the longlist for the 2013 CBC Writes contest. She won the inaugural Walrus Poetry Prize in 2012, and one of her poems was on the shortlist for the 2013 Walrus Poetry Prize. Meira was also the 2013 writer-in-residence for the Winnipeg Public Library.

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      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?
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