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The third book in Wave’s Bagley Wright Lecture Series presenting the vibrant and generous poetics of Dorothea Lasky.
Constellating four central topics—ghosts, colors, animals, and bees—in highly attuned prose, Dorothea Lasky explores the powers and complexities of the lyric, “metaphysical I,” which she exposes as one of the central expressions of human wildness. In deceptively simple language carrying profound insights directly to readers—with a sense that is at once bold and subtle—Lasky serves as an encouraging guide through the startling, sometimes dangerous, always exhilarating landscapes of feral poetic imagination.
Constellating four central topics—ghosts, colors, animals, and bees—in highly attuned prose, Dorothea Lasky explores the powers and complexities of the lyric, “metaphysical I,” which she exposes as one of the central expressions of human wildness. In deceptively simple language carrying profound insights directly to readers—with a sense that is at once bold and subtle—Lasky serves as an encouraging guide through the startling, sometimes dangerous, always exhilarating landscapes of feral poetic imagination.
- GenresPoetryEssaysNonfiction
136 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
April 10, 2020
Siempre he amado a Dorothea Lasky como poeta, pero es que también es una ensayista alucinante. Animal es un libro para descubrir muchos secretos sobre la vida de los poemas. Porque sí, según Lasky, la poesía late.
October 10, 2023
I love you Dottie 💟
July 13, 2025
Dottie, you blow my mind every time. You’re a genius, I love you. Need to incorporate more color into my wardrobe.
December 29, 2025
To write a poem-
to open yourself up to accident,
to meet the animal in the dead of night,
to echo what will already be,
to describe what can't ever be again
to open yourself up to accident,
to meet the animal in the dead of night,
to echo what will already be,
to describe what can't ever be again
January 1, 2020
https://rogueliterarysociety.com/f/an...
...Should the I be the poet?...
First off, any person who enlists Jack Spicer or Bernadette Mayer to explain or demonstrate poetry should never be trusted. And the fact that Dorothea Lasky employs them from the very beginning, as well as her holding important academic posts that provides platforms in which to present lectures regarding poetry, is a good example why poetry remains on its pathetic, downward slide. For one, I believe it takes a certain type of person to get something out of a Bernadette Mayer poem, and I do not ever want to be associated with that crowd. Then to add insult to injury I found online a piece by Dorothea Lasky titled Poem to an Unnameable Man, and when my spouse overheard Lasky reading her poem aloud on my machine she was horrified. What a terrible poem. I mentioned to my wife that Lasky sounded just like Bernadette Mayer and she agreed. Horrible, horrible example of poetry. I am embarrassed to say I once shared the same stage with Bernadette Mayer during a symposium on experimental writing at Loyola University in New Orleans back in 1999.
...That a piece of art is authentic when the demonic is at play in it, when it has gone to the other world and brought a spirit back to inhabit it. And so that when you are experiencing a piece of art with duende in it, you will feel delight and disgust when you encounter the demonic. And that without a little demon, a poem is not a poem at all…
Lasky’s first essay did resonate with me in the beginning. I have learned through the years writing and reading poetry how important the unheimliche is to a good poem. For years I have stated that after finishing the reading of a very good poem I at once feel soiled, even if the experience was delightful. So Lasky’s statement of feeling both delight and disgust in reading or hearing a good poem I wholeheartedly agree with.
...When we write poems, what is important about writing them, is what we create within the brains of others. This is what makes the possibility of a world past this one possible…
Here we somewhat disagree. I do not think it is the brain that decides what is created. Whatever It is has already been created in the poem and what happens is the serious reader feels it in the body. Gordon Lish taught aspiring writers that original and creative work should be unexampled in its feeling. There are times when a poem creates itself and the poet is simply a vehicle, but for the most part it takes an enormous amount of effort to find the opening in which the words come through and the lucky writer captures them. To think the poet simply clever is false. There is a spirit at work, perhaps demonic, but in my mind it is more an inspired otherworldly force that is not necessarily good or bad. It just is.
The following quotation is taken from Lasky’s second essay on colors in a poem. She chooses, again, unwisely, to use a Bernadette Mayer poem as an example and then asks the question:
...Almost every line in her poem includes a color. I often think” What would this poem be without these colors?...
To any serious and discerning reader the answer is clear. Color words make no difference at all to an already inferior work. It is unbelievable to me how these people promote the disgusting idea that mediocre and deficient writing constitutes poetry. No wonder hardly anyone but sentimentalists and angry persons sing its praises. It is not that color words cannot and should not be used in a poem. The following is a personal example of a poem using color words that mysteriously engages the reader, makes the reader feel something in its body, and uncannily has meaning even by refusing to explain what it might be up to.
Blue Dirt
The sky blue.
The earth brown.
The blue blue.
The brown brown.
Spend a few moments with the above poem. Do not simply disregard it for its simplicity. I humbly submit that if you do spend some time you will experience for yourself an entire world. Creating a world in a matter of a few words is poetry. Endless rhetoric, insistent complaining, the bore of explaining, and promoting a personal agenda is not poetry.
...Because colors themselves are not real, but in poems they are the connection between the real and dream worlds, are reunifications of self with its dreaming self…Color in a poem can change the shared imaginative space the poem creates. It can make a new reality, with the imperceptible coming into reality⸺completely terrifying⸺as in Wallace Stevens’s poem “Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock,” where he embodies disembodied nightgowns with hallucinatory color choices…
...People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles,
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers
In red weather.
Lasky’s use of Wallace Stevens, Goethe, and Wittgenstein does add credibility to her premise and insures both the perception and reality that the inclusion of her other contemporary examples are woefully inadequate to the task.
...to acknowledge that a need to express what is our greatest gift as a humanity⸺the dance of the spirit through the imagination as manifest in language and color⸺is a need, a want, that you are willing to go into the wild night to achieve...
In Lasky’s essay titled Animal she invokes the words of Emily Dickinson and Giorgio Agamben which by default, and basically for no other reason, makes the essay instantly credible. And it is interesting that nowhere can be found the likes of Bernadette Mayer in such an intensely serious and relevant topic. Still, the essay fails to connect with me even when she goes on to add Sylvia Plath, William Carlos Williams, Allen Ginsberg, and Baudelaire to her mix.
...Poetry is not precious. It is a gentle and awful animal...
Lasky’s last essay on bees, and their relevance to poetry, is her longest and most tiresome. Lasky again resurrects the name of Bernadette Mayer, and this time in reverence befitting the queen of her hive. This mentioning of Mayer so often in Lasky’s work makes it very difficult to proceed reading her essays with respect and an open mind. Mayer, to cherry-pick a word from Sylvia Plath, is simply unmiraculous . As is Lasky. And to keep allegiance to a spirit of fairness I will add that Plath’s life story is far more interesting and creative than her actual poems were. It is not enough for a writer to be queen of a hive. It is far better to make history by writing poems that cannot, and will not, be denied. Of course, the poet will never know each poem’s eventual fate for the poet will have died and left the poems for history to decide. But Lasky, in her lofty position of expert, too often lends her voice to promote certain poems and poets that are inadequate. However, her contemporary hive does have pop, numbers, and a loud voice, but it is my belief that history will prove not to be kind to her ilk. For example, the prior and hugely popular Beat poetry is already losing its grip on what was deemed possessing quality and significance. The poem Howl set a standard few of Ginsberg’s friends and associates could attain with their own work. And I am certain Dorothea Lasky, Bernadette Mayer, and all their hive will suffer the same fate. In contrast, the work of dead great poets such as Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, and Jack Gilbert will continue to live on and thrive as long as humans continue to walk the earth.
“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?”
― Emily Dickinson, Selected Letters
...Should the I be the poet?...
First off, any person who enlists Jack Spicer or Bernadette Mayer to explain or demonstrate poetry should never be trusted. And the fact that Dorothea Lasky employs them from the very beginning, as well as her holding important academic posts that provides platforms in which to present lectures regarding poetry, is a good example why poetry remains on its pathetic, downward slide. For one, I believe it takes a certain type of person to get something out of a Bernadette Mayer poem, and I do not ever want to be associated with that crowd. Then to add insult to injury I found online a piece by Dorothea Lasky titled Poem to an Unnameable Man, and when my spouse overheard Lasky reading her poem aloud on my machine she was horrified. What a terrible poem. I mentioned to my wife that Lasky sounded just like Bernadette Mayer and she agreed. Horrible, horrible example of poetry. I am embarrassed to say I once shared the same stage with Bernadette Mayer during a symposium on experimental writing at Loyola University in New Orleans back in 1999.
...That a piece of art is authentic when the demonic is at play in it, when it has gone to the other world and brought a spirit back to inhabit it. And so that when you are experiencing a piece of art with duende in it, you will feel delight and disgust when you encounter the demonic. And that without a little demon, a poem is not a poem at all…
Lasky’s first essay did resonate with me in the beginning. I have learned through the years writing and reading poetry how important the unheimliche is to a good poem. For years I have stated that after finishing the reading of a very good poem I at once feel soiled, even if the experience was delightful. So Lasky’s statement of feeling both delight and disgust in reading or hearing a good poem I wholeheartedly agree with.
...When we write poems, what is important about writing them, is what we create within the brains of others. This is what makes the possibility of a world past this one possible…
Here we somewhat disagree. I do not think it is the brain that decides what is created. Whatever It is has already been created in the poem and what happens is the serious reader feels it in the body. Gordon Lish taught aspiring writers that original and creative work should be unexampled in its feeling. There are times when a poem creates itself and the poet is simply a vehicle, but for the most part it takes an enormous amount of effort to find the opening in which the words come through and the lucky writer captures them. To think the poet simply clever is false. There is a spirit at work, perhaps demonic, but in my mind it is more an inspired otherworldly force that is not necessarily good or bad. It just is.
The following quotation is taken from Lasky’s second essay on colors in a poem. She chooses, again, unwisely, to use a Bernadette Mayer poem as an example and then asks the question:
...Almost every line in her poem includes a color. I often think” What would this poem be without these colors?...
To any serious and discerning reader the answer is clear. Color words make no difference at all to an already inferior work. It is unbelievable to me how these people promote the disgusting idea that mediocre and deficient writing constitutes poetry. No wonder hardly anyone but sentimentalists and angry persons sing its praises. It is not that color words cannot and should not be used in a poem. The following is a personal example of a poem using color words that mysteriously engages the reader, makes the reader feel something in its body, and uncannily has meaning even by refusing to explain what it might be up to.
Blue Dirt
The sky blue.
The earth brown.
The blue blue.
The brown brown.
Spend a few moments with the above poem. Do not simply disregard it for its simplicity. I humbly submit that if you do spend some time you will experience for yourself an entire world. Creating a world in a matter of a few words is poetry. Endless rhetoric, insistent complaining, the bore of explaining, and promoting a personal agenda is not poetry.
...Because colors themselves are not real, but in poems they are the connection between the real and dream worlds, are reunifications of self with its dreaming self…Color in a poem can change the shared imaginative space the poem creates. It can make a new reality, with the imperceptible coming into reality⸺completely terrifying⸺as in Wallace Stevens’s poem “Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock,” where he embodies disembodied nightgowns with hallucinatory color choices…
...People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles,
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers
In red weather.
Lasky’s use of Wallace Stevens, Goethe, and Wittgenstein does add credibility to her premise and insures both the perception and reality that the inclusion of her other contemporary examples are woefully inadequate to the task.
...to acknowledge that a need to express what is our greatest gift as a humanity⸺the dance of the spirit through the imagination as manifest in language and color⸺is a need, a want, that you are willing to go into the wild night to achieve...
In Lasky’s essay titled Animal she invokes the words of Emily Dickinson and Giorgio Agamben which by default, and basically for no other reason, makes the essay instantly credible. And it is interesting that nowhere can be found the likes of Bernadette Mayer in such an intensely serious and relevant topic. Still, the essay fails to connect with me even when she goes on to add Sylvia Plath, William Carlos Williams, Allen Ginsberg, and Baudelaire to her mix.
...Poetry is not precious. It is a gentle and awful animal...
Lasky’s last essay on bees, and their relevance to poetry, is her longest and most tiresome. Lasky again resurrects the name of Bernadette Mayer, and this time in reverence befitting the queen of her hive. This mentioning of Mayer so often in Lasky’s work makes it very difficult to proceed reading her essays with respect and an open mind. Mayer, to cherry-pick a word from Sylvia Plath, is simply unmiraculous . As is Lasky. And to keep allegiance to a spirit of fairness I will add that Plath’s life story is far more interesting and creative than her actual poems were. It is not enough for a writer to be queen of a hive. It is far better to make history by writing poems that cannot, and will not, be denied. Of course, the poet will never know each poem’s eventual fate for the poet will have died and left the poems for history to decide. But Lasky, in her lofty position of expert, too often lends her voice to promote certain poems and poets that are inadequate. However, her contemporary hive does have pop, numbers, and a loud voice, but it is my belief that history will prove not to be kind to her ilk. For example, the prior and hugely popular Beat poetry is already losing its grip on what was deemed possessing quality and significance. The poem Howl set a standard few of Ginsberg’s friends and associates could attain with their own work. And I am certain Dorothea Lasky, Bernadette Mayer, and all their hive will suffer the same fate. In contrast, the work of dead great poets such as Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, and Jack Gilbert will continue to live on and thrive as long as humans continue to walk the earth.
“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?”
― Emily Dickinson, Selected Letters
April 16, 2021
I bought this at a used bookshop on a whim. I'm always looking for little collections of essays, and this one filled all my usual criteria: author I thought I recognized from my poetry shelf, simple title, essays on poetry, readable prose style, and, yes, pretty cover. The book itself also has a really nice weight to it. Maybe these points don't factor in on your book decision-making, but when faced with an immediate purchase dilemma, especially at a used bookshop, these are the things that matter most to me.
I'm so glad I sprung on this book. The essays are immensely readable, in turns instructive and deeply personal. I got a kick out of how often Lasky pulls poetic examples from the film version of Stephen King's "The Shining." Also, the last essay includes examples of poetic craft from Lil Kim and Nicki Minaj alongside Sylvia Plath and Maggie Nelson, which I think is fantastic.
Lasky's craft vignettes are perfect teaching tools, whether you're aiming to teach only yourself, or working with a classroom of strong-headed teens and twenty-somethings. She writes in plain language, never drifts into concepts so ephemeral that they're nearly impossible to understand. The biggest complaints I get about poetry are that someone doesn't know where to begin, doesn't know how to read it, or doesn't know how to interpret what they've read. I think this collection offers a good jumping-off point for all these complaints.
I'm so glad I sprung on this book. The essays are immensely readable, in turns instructive and deeply personal. I got a kick out of how often Lasky pulls poetic examples from the film version of Stephen King's "The Shining." Also, the last essay includes examples of poetic craft from Lil Kim and Nicki Minaj alongside Sylvia Plath and Maggie Nelson, which I think is fantastic.
Lasky's craft vignettes are perfect teaching tools, whether you're aiming to teach only yourself, or working with a classroom of strong-headed teens and twenty-somethings. She writes in plain language, never drifts into concepts so ephemeral that they're nearly impossible to understand. The biggest complaints I get about poetry are that someone doesn't know where to begin, doesn't know how to read it, or doesn't know how to interpret what they've read. I think this collection offers a good jumping-off point for all these complaints.
September 1, 2022
Four poetics essays on ghosts/imprints in poems that create new realities for the reader, the value of color, how poets succumb to wildness—our very animal selves, and the poet's work as the bee's work, with sweetness and lingering. Lasky has an almost hyper awareness of a poem's performance and audience that didn't always resonate with me. But her arguments for how poetry creates connections all over the place is one that does.
I liked most her weaving in of the personal and how it's shaped her approach as well as her breakdown of poems. I particularly liked her essay on color, how sense details are so powerful for immediately creating a shared "weighted imaginative space” between writer and readers. A thought-provoking read.
“Perhaps this is poetry's purpose in our lives, to reconnect the real and dream worlds to one's own dormant light."
“Poetry is not precious. It is a gentle and awful animal. One that you can trust will come back again and again.”
"To have a vision of something , to perceive in a visionary way, is to assume in some way that what we see is real, or weighty, is affected by gravity, is material. Blake saw the angel, believed that he saw it, and it changed him. It created a space in his mind for the angel to go. He wrote poems about it, with new words and new language and new angels from this imaginative space. We read those poems still."
I liked most her weaving in of the personal and how it's shaped her approach as well as her breakdown of poems. I particularly liked her essay on color, how sense details are so powerful for immediately creating a shared "weighted imaginative space” between writer and readers. A thought-provoking read.
“Perhaps this is poetry's purpose in our lives, to reconnect the real and dream worlds to one's own dormant light."
“Poetry is not precious. It is a gentle and awful animal. One that you can trust will come back again and again.”
"To have a vision of something , to perceive in a visionary way, is to assume in some way that what we see is real, or weighty, is affected by gravity, is material. Blake saw the angel, believed that he saw it, and it changed him. It created a space in his mind for the angel to go. He wrote poems about it, with new words and new language and new angels from this imaginative space. We read those poems still."
April 4, 2020
I’m not a poet, but this book was a delightful plunge into a thoughtful exploration of poetry and how its meaning and impact bleeds into our broader world and ways of thinking. I am not familiar with the politics of poetry—one poet’s thoughts and aesthetics versus another—but I didn’t find Lasky to be aggressive or forceful in making her thoughts and ideas the only way to believe in and think about poetry. I love her thoughts about ghosts and bees; these lectures felt in themselves poetic while still being accessible to other ideas about the world and how language attempts to fit inside it.
Overall, a beautiful book and thoughtful presentation. I enjoyed the time I got to spend with these small lectures.
Shoutout to Wave Books for making this beautiful book!
Overall, a beautiful book and thoughtful presentation. I enjoyed the time I got to spend with these small lectures.
Shoutout to Wave Books for making this beautiful book!
May 2, 2022
Lasky provides what could be considered, on one hand, an *ars poetica*, addressing interesting aspects of her poetic speaker, the imaginative relationship her poems have with reality, and the elastic perspecive the poems speak to, espouse, and inhabit. I would recommend these essays for people who would appreciate a better informed reading of Dorothea Lasky poems.
And I woudl recommend the essays for people wanting to think more carefully about how their own poet is. Why do they do what they do? How to cultivate metaphysical or otherworldly into their poems. How to broaden the self that is currently living their life, just for the sake of living a more interesting life. But also becaus a more interesting life will likely lead to more interesting poems.
And I woudl recommend the essays for people wanting to think more carefully about how their own poet is. Why do they do what they do? How to cultivate metaphysical or otherworldly into their poems. How to broaden the self that is currently living their life, just for the sake of living a more interesting life. But also becaus a more interesting life will likely lead to more interesting poems.
August 1, 2024
Captivating and could not put down. A dear friend let me borrow her copy on vacation and it enveloped and sealed me in for my plane ride. At times my heart softened, stiffened, crumbled, got sticky, got puzzle pieced back together. Laughed at a few pop culture academia dissections. Marveled at a few four-word sentences. Experienced awe for the color red through the eyes of others. Understood the word animal deeper, let go of the fear of poetry I developed in adulthood because it was a fear of being wild, and being wild is an incredible joy. My favorite read of the year so far.
May 7, 2023
bumped up from a 3.5--the Minaj reading was superb & the unabashed yet also utterly personal enthusiasm was really warm to read. i did think the bees essay was the best even though I disagree with the ultimate "industriousness" of the poet, the voice that sings to be sung. keats ends up right imo! it'd be interesting to think about the "work" as balancing a passive reception & a continuous effort--an effort to make home/comb happenstance.
June 23, 2024
It's not to say that this collection of essays about poetry is bad - it's just that I didn't think it was good enough to earn any rating higher than 3 stars.
Sure, colors are nice, important, even. But they will never advance a bland poem to a beautiful one.
Other gripes include the creation process. Sometimes, poems are not made, they are simply reshaped from what has already been given to the person writing.
Sure, colors are nice, important, even. But they will never advance a bland poem to a beautiful one.
Other gripes include the creation process. Sometimes, poems are not made, they are simply reshaped from what has already been given to the person writing.
April 27, 2022
Now that she's gone, I wonder: What did Lucy teach me about living? I think she taught me: The world is a dirge. Ultimately all you love is a death song.
What does love care about love? Love is all about what it means to need.
When people call other people crazy I don't get mad, I get bored.
What does love care about love? Love is all about what it means to need.
When people call other people crazy I don't get mad, I get bored.
December 14, 2024
This is one of my favorite books I’ve read. It discusses poetry form and purpose and intention which I haven’t encountered elsewhere. I am familiar with most of the poets, books, etc. referenced (many of my favorites!) and will be pondering Lasky’s thoughts for a while.
Alice kindly lent me a copy and I definitely will need to acquire my own soon.
Alice kindly lent me a copy and I definitely will need to acquire my own soon.
November 7, 2019
I especially liked the first two essays.
December 28, 2019
A beautiful meditation by poets for poets on the role poetry plays in the imagination. I feel a renewed awe for poetry after finishing this book.
Read
April 14, 2021An essay collection on poetry as it relates to ghosts, color, bees, and Animal from the muppets. Loved it. Because of the first essay, I'm now a true believer in ghosts.
May 6, 2019
Really excellent writing on poetics. Illuminating and enjoyable. Lasky's Bagley Wright lectures are both thought-provoking and delightful, and this book extends that trend.
June 25, 2020
Animal contains four essays adapted from lectures Lasky gave over the past few years for Wave Book's Bagley Wright Lecture Series. I've read a few authors published by Wave, and I'm always impressed by the total package the publisher creates; its well-designed books are a bit like candy. I was looking forward to Animal because Lasky's connections between poetry and the occult mirror my own approach to writing through spirituality.
The first essay considers the concept of ghosts and their role in creating a shared imaginative space between poet and reader. The second, the one that sold me on reading this book, discusses the power of color to enhance and electrify poems. This was my favorite essay, probably because I'm obsessed with color and, like Lasky, am especially attuned to it when reading and writing poetry. The third essay considers the idea of the animal, or beast, in poetry. It inspired me to cultivate the wild nature of poems, to let out their singular demons (as Lasky calls them). The final essay connects the magic of bees, those fascinating creatures who create their own food and homes, to the magic of poetry, and to being one's own "queen bee." Lasky's poetics are more abstract than I was expecting, but there was still a lot of enjoyment to be had from this book. I have to agree with Lasky when she says, "as a poet, in poetry, things that do not involve the occult-- frankly, they just bore me." Agreed!
The first essay considers the concept of ghosts and their role in creating a shared imaginative space between poet and reader. The second, the one that sold me on reading this book, discusses the power of color to enhance and electrify poems. This was my favorite essay, probably because I'm obsessed with color and, like Lasky, am especially attuned to it when reading and writing poetry. The third essay considers the idea of the animal, or beast, in poetry. It inspired me to cultivate the wild nature of poems, to let out their singular demons (as Lasky calls them). The final essay connects the magic of bees, those fascinating creatures who create their own food and homes, to the magic of poetry, and to being one's own "queen bee." Lasky's poetics are more abstract than I was expecting, but there was still a lot of enjoyment to be had from this book. I have to agree with Lasky when she says, "as a poet, in poetry, things that do not involve the occult-- frankly, they just bore me." Agreed!
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews