Rescue Dogs

by Fred Zirm

Finalist in The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2023

Fred Zirm has known and adopted many Rescue Dogs throughout his life. These canine companions taught him both serious and humorous lessons about life, love, friendship, aging, death, and resilience. Between the laughter and the tears, these delightful and heartwarming poems featuring Carabelle, Dory, Larry, Woofer, Trey, and Snuffles, will have you ponder: Who rescued whom?

Enjoy a Video of Fred reading from the book:

Early Praise for Rescue Dogs:

I scratch her head and then
offer her the tethered freedom of the leash.
She is once again delighted
the world is just beyond our door—
and she can lead me through it.

And the world we enter with Fred Zirm’s dog is a lovely place indeed, full of beauty, wry humor, and unexpected discoveries, a place where dogs rescue humans, humans rescue dogs, and the reader goes away with a deeper appreciation of the ancient and mysterious bond between animal and man. This lovely book made me realize that I absolutely have to get a dog, because you can’t really take a walk without having a dog there to show you what you’re missing. As Zirm points out:

all dogs are guide dogs,
alerting us to what we
might miss, all the unseen
mysteries of place and time
in a twig or leaf or clump
of grass that tell us where
we are and who’s been here before.

Take a walk with Fred Zirm and his dogs. You’ll be reminded of why you came to poetry in the first place.

—George Bilgere, author of Cheap Motel Rooms of My Youth (Rattle Chapbook Prizewinner)

Hark (and bark) to the heroes that pounce and doze throughout Fred Zirm’s moving new collection, Rescue Dogs: here’s Dory the Deaf, Trey the Tri-pawed, Carabelle, Larry, Snuff, Woof, and the younger one. All dogs are guide dogs, Zirm writes, and these fetching meditations show the deep affection and abiding insights that come from living tenderly with animals as an animal. Wry and warm, Zirm’s poems remain eager to see what comes next while illuminating the hard lessons and gentle paradoxes of life among loss and time.

—Zach Savich, author of Daybed

In Rescue Dogs, Fred Zirm takes us on our mortal journey with dogs as both our guides and our companions. Observing the human world through their eyes—and their world through our own—his poems become the leash we follow to a deeper understanding of what it means to be alive. With its wit, intelligence, and profound emotion, Rescue Dogs deserves a place on every dog owner’s—and poetry lover’s—bedside table.

—Sue Ellen Thompson, author of Sea Nettles: New & Selected Poems
and Winner of the Maryland Author Award

About the Author

After earning a B.A. and M.A. in English from Michigan State and an M.F.A. from the Playwrights Workshop at the University of Iowa, Fred Zirm spent nearly 40 years teaching English and drama at an independent boys’ school in Maryland. Since his retirement, he has continued to direct plays at community theaters but has also focused on writing poetry and has become deeply involved with the Writers’ Center at the Chautauqua Institution. His work has been published in over a dozen small literary magazines and anthologies, including The Café Review, Still Crazy, cahoodadoodaling (Pushcart Prize nominee), Greek Fire, Poeming Pigeons, and Objects in the Rearview Mirror. His first poetry chapbook, Object Lessons (Main Street Rag), was published in January 2021.

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by Penelope Scambly Schott

Penelope’s goldendoodle, Sophia is quite the free spirit—so much so that she reminds the poet of Walt Whitman. In this jeu d’esprit, consisting of 30 poems, we enjoy a delightful peek inside the mind of a dog through her often entertaining & insightful “conversations” and adopted philosophies of her favorite poet (after her poet-owner, of course).

Enjoy a video of Penelope reading from the book:

Penelope Scambly Schott — A Featured Poet on The Poetry Box LIVE (April 2021)

About the Authors

Penelope Scambly Schott is a past recipient of the Oregon Book Award for Poetry and author of a novel and several books of poetry, including her 2018 prizewinning chapbook November Quilt and most recently On Dufur Hill about a small wheat-growing town in central Oregon.

Sophia Schott Sweetdog is a four-year-old white goldendoodle, the niece of Lily Schott Sweetdog who co-wrote Lily and Rumi: A Lovestory.

Mister Walter Whitman is a greatly admired nineteenth-century American poet who wrote Leaves of Grass.

Early Praise for Sophia and Mister Walter Whitman:

In Sophia and Mister Walter Whitman, Penelope Scambly Schott’s goldendoodle narrates from a dog’s point of view. Sophia loves reading and quoting Walt Whitman. Phrases from Leaves of Grass are seamlessly woven into every poem. In “Endless Afternoon” Sophia waits for her person to return home. “The clock indicates the moment —/ but what does eternity indicate? I’ll be old by the time they eat dinner./ I’ll be older by the time I get to lick their plates.” Four out of four paws for this extremely entertaining collection.

—Mark Thalman, author of The Peasant Dance and Stronger Than the Current

Penelope Scambly Schott’s playful poetry collection, Sophia and Mister Walter Whitman, is a delight, especially for admirers of both our companionable canine citizens and Whitman’s poetry. Poems expressed in the voice of Schott’s goldendoodle, Sophia, draw us into the illusion that somehow Sophia is not only well-versed in Whitman, but she has also adapted many of his views to her own world. Sophia’s dog world is one of joy but, perhaps unlike Whitman, she occasionally experiences guilt or self-doubt, as when she suspects there was once another beloved dog before her time, or when she gives in to her worst instincts by attacking a neighbor’s chickens. In the search for her better self, Sophia adapts some of Whitman’s lines and views. One of the pleasures of these poems is recognizing the actual words of Whitman re-purposed here to Sophia’s doggy world view.

—Barbara Drake, author of The Road to Lilac Hill

What a delightful escape into a pup’s mind! Ms. Schott captures the worries, aspirations, and joys of a dog. Sophia quotes and Schott incorporates Whitman’s advice: “Whatever satisfies the soul/ is truth and there’s no truth like cheese” and “The thing about dogs is/ they do not lie awaken the dark/ and weep for their sins.” We are reminded that even on bad days we “exist as [we are], that is enough.” I could write more but I’ll let the rest be a pleasant surprise to the reader!

—Rebecca Smolen, vet tech and author of Excoriation

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by Penelope Scambly Schott

A Poetry Box Chapbook Prize Selection – Second Place

Reading November Quilt, by acclaimed author and poet, Penelope Scambly Schott, is akin to making a new friend. Brew a cup of tea and curl up in your favorite reading chair as you’re invited to share life experiences, aphorisms, confessions, and curious ponderings in this delightful collection of 30 poems (one for each day of the month).

About the Author

Penelope Scambly Schott leads a double life. In Portland, Oregon she goes to theater and poetry events and she and her husband host the White Dog Poetry Salon in their home on a hill. In Dufur, Oregon (population 604) she and the white dog climb D hill between the wheat fields and admire the east side of Mount Hood. Also in Dufur she writes and leads an annual poetry workshop. Here she and the dog wander about in the dark. The dog admires the dirt underpaw while the woman sniffs stars.

Penelope’s verse biography A is for Anne: Mistress Hutchinson Disturbs the Commonwealth received an Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Other books include Serpent Love: A Mother-Daughter Epic about a struggle with her adult daughter, along with an essay in which the daughter gives her point of view, and Bailing the River, a poetry collection full of dogs, coyotes, and the unsolvable and sometimes funny mysteries of the ordinary. Most recent is House of the Cardamom Seed.

She is grateful to her family and her weekly hiking group as well as Word Sisters, Cool Women Poets of New Jersey, Pearls, and her far-flung on-line critique group.

What They’re Saying  . . .

“Penelope Scambly Schott’s award-winning chapbook of thirty poems—organized and titled as one-a-day offerings for the month of November—reads like a series of brief, conversational letters to the reader. Longings are shared, intimacies revealed, disappointments confessed. Along the way, truths are discovered and delivered aphoristically: ‘Lives don’t have plots; they have refrains.’ Thoughtful and thought- provoking, these poems are not as much meditations as they are invitations—to ponder, to converse, to be disturbed, to love, to never forget. “Sometimes,” Schott writes, ‘I am the surface of a lake / perturbed by every passing breeze that blows.’ In November Quilt, she blows back.”

~Andrea Hollander, author of Blue Mistaken for Sky

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