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Dear Beast
- GenresPoetry
120 pages, Paperback
Published March 15, 2026
About the author
Catherine Pierce
14 books40 followersCatherine Pierce served as the Poet Laureate of Mississippi from 2021-2025 and is the author of four books of poems: Danger Days (2020), The Tornado Is the World (2016), The Girls of Peculiar (2012), and Famous Last Words (2008), all from Saturnalia Books. Each of her most recent three books won the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Poetry Prize; Famous Last Words won the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. Two new books are forthcoming in 2026: a memoir, Foxes for Everybody, from Northwestern University Press, and a poetry collection, Dear Beast, from Saturnalia.
Pierce’s poems have been published in many journals and anthologies, including The Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, The Nation, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, New England Review, FIELD, Pleiades, Gettysburg Review, and the 2019 and 2021 Pushcart Prize anthologies. Her essays appear in The New York Times, Ecotone, The Rumpus, The Millions, Cincinnati Review, and River Teeth. In 2019, she was named a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, and in 2022 she was selected as an Academy of American Poets’ Laureate Fellow.
From 2007-2024, Pierce was professor of English and co-director of the creative writing program at Mississippi State. She recently moved with her family back to her home state of Delaware, where she runs Studio & Craft, a poetry community, and continues to write, teach, and spend as much time outside as possible.
Pierce’s poems have been published in many journals and anthologies, including The Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, The Nation, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, New England Review, FIELD, Pleiades, Gettysburg Review, and the 2019 and 2021 Pushcart Prize anthologies. Her essays appear in The New York Times, Ecotone, The Rumpus, The Millions, Cincinnati Review, and River Teeth. In 2019, she was named a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, and in 2022 she was selected as an Academy of American Poets’ Laureate Fellow.
From 2007-2024, Pierce was professor of English and co-director of the creative writing program at Mississippi State. She recently moved with her family back to her home state of Delaware, where she runs Studio & Craft, a poetry community, and continues to write, teach, and spend as much time outside as possible.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
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March 22, 2026Is eco-poetry a word? I'm guessing so, as "eco-" was once in vogue as a prefix for environmental awareness (which is decidedly NOT in vogue today at the White House in Washington D.C. (stands for "Dumb and Corrupt").
Anyhoo, if you like poetry and animals and nature, this little collection might prove worth your while. It's especially good if you are an infrequent reader of poetry because you consider it too high-brow. This one's approachable and at times light-hearted, as Pierce shows off her sense of humor more than once.
As an exemplar, I give you my favorite poem in the collection:
In the Woods All Animals Are Large
The difference between
a cougar stalking a deer
through gold leaves
and a squirrel dashing
over the underbrush
is no difference at all,
not when you’re listening
from your backyard
to the woods’ sudden
rustling. The robin
is the fox is the buck
is the bear, one beast
of wings and claws
and antlers. Your mind
is the same kind
of chimera, wearing
stroke, death, rupture,
breathing fire.
It’s exhausting, isn’t it,
the catastrophizing,
the endless possibilities?
A relief, then, to sit
in your backyard and listen
to the crackling leaves.
You have no control
over an animal that lives
outside your head.
What’s coming for you
could be anything.
Anyhoo, if you like poetry and animals and nature, this little collection might prove worth your while. It's especially good if you are an infrequent reader of poetry because you consider it too high-brow. This one's approachable and at times light-hearted, as Pierce shows off her sense of humor more than once.
As an exemplar, I give you my favorite poem in the collection:
In the Woods All Animals Are Large
The difference between
a cougar stalking a deer
through gold leaves
and a squirrel dashing
over the underbrush
is no difference at all,
not when you’re listening
from your backyard
to the woods’ sudden
rustling. The robin
is the fox is the buck
is the bear, one beast
of wings and claws
and antlers. Your mind
is the same kind
of chimera, wearing
stroke, death, rupture,
breathing fire.
It’s exhausting, isn’t it,
the catastrophizing,
the endless possibilities?
A relief, then, to sit
in your backyard and listen
to the crackling leaves.
You have no control
over an animal that lives
outside your head.
What’s coming for you
could be anything.
June 10, 2026
Personal taste rating: 3.5 stars
Not as personally compelling as the other collections of Pierce's that I've read, but her use of enjambment continues to delight & surprise me, the [parts of speech]wolves poems were fabulously creative ways to begin each section (and what initially drew me in to buy this one), and I particularly enjoyed her use of animals that created a through line without ever becoming over-used.
For some reason I'm noticing a trend in my own reading that 3/4ths through a poetry collection I get tired of the poet's voice and have to take like a month-long break. So idk what's up with that.
Not as personally compelling as the other collections of Pierce's that I've read, but her use of enjambment continues to delight & surprise me, the [parts of speech]wolves poems were fabulously creative ways to begin each section (and what initially drew me in to buy this one), and I particularly enjoyed her use of animals that created a through line without ever becoming over-used.
For some reason I'm noticing a trend in my own reading that 3/4ths through a poetry collection I get tired of the poet's voice and have to take like a month-long break. So idk what's up with that.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews