Love Is a Dog That Bites When It's Scared

by Courtney Marie Andrews

An impressive and though-provoking collection from GRAMMY nominated artist and poet Courtney Marie Andrews.

With the same vulnerability and timelessness as her debut collection Old Monarch, Love Is a Dog That Bites When It’s Scared acknowledges the layers to our feelings, experiences, and humanity. Inspired by her own life, Courtney Marie Andrews speaks gently to love and its many layers. She comforts readers with the knowledge that though love is confusing, unorganized, bewitching, and often too hard, it is also magical, and surreal, and always worth it.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

Published August 26, 2025

Reviews

[N.Barber · Rating 4 out of 5]

A more thematically constructed collection than “Old Monarch” - the poems vary in style and content, from stream of consciousness observations to tightly constructed ee cummings- alike snippets.
There’s a refreshing honesty about the impermanence and satisfaction derived from the moments of love that exist and are experienced. It’s a philosophical and discursive set of observations - there’s even positivity and self-evaluation and acceptance in amongst bleaker moments too.
As a fan of CMA’s music, I do wonder at what point in the creative process, the outpouring of inspiration chooses its form - what triggers the lyric as opposed to the lyrical? I guess only the muse knows.

[Ezekiel]

These aren't good, though I found that the EXPECTATIONS AT THE ZOO section seemed markedly better than the rest.

Lines I liked:

"Canvas-faced drummers
paint thunder
on a street named Desire"

"We are convicts of distraction."

The best poems in the book, to my memory:

"The Reduction of Myself" and "I Do Not Want To Write About Love"

[Smooballs · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book to give to a friend, based on the title. I ended up reading it first. I feel like the author and I could be friends with her thought process and comparisons.

It’s a series of poems walking through the stages of a romantic relationship from the beginning to the end to the after the-end when life keeps going and coping kicks in.

I’m not a huge traditional poetry buff, a lot of poetry comes off as pretentious or convoluted trying to be artistic, so I like poetry that reads as stories or pages out of a diary that is easy to relate/understand. Which I did.

I was hoping for the over arching story to come full circle, but I think the author has not come full circle yet and I hope she does and gets to write follow up book.

[The_J · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not terrible, with some limited insight.

Masterpiece

Silence is a great storyteller.
Better than Shakespeare
or Hemingway.

Your refusal to speak
elicits my greatest works
of tragedy and comedy.

[Allyson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was actually pretty good, and while not every poem was a hit for me, there were definitely some standout ones that left an impact, as well as a handful of lines that really stuck out to me.

[Anastassia Truong-Fumano · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is hard to judge poetry because who am I to judge how someone feels and expresses their pain and sorrow. Yet a lot of the poems fell flat, or felt like a quote from Pinterest and fed through an AI generator. There was not a lot or “scared dog” motifs for a poetry collection with “scared dog” in the title. I tried to enjoy it and found some lines profound but overall it was just meh.