WRITING
Dogs of Brooklyn
“Susie DeFord’s DOGS OF BROOKLYN is a high-energy homage to a neighborhood, a borough, and a city. It offers a lament for the city’s “becoming like the suburban sprawl we all fled here to escape” while also standing as proof of the city’s vitality, its ongoing possibility for poetry. Full of dicey humor and uncommon open-heartedness for human and non-human animals alike, DOGS OF BROOKLYN celebrates the blessed state of being both one and numerous.” –Maggie Nelson
“From the strut of “Prospect Heights Pop” Susie DeFord lets us have it with her “swing dance bopping / big band mind” and that IT is Brooklyn with its “trash confetti streets” where Spring’s pollen turns to summer’s barbeque smoke and dirt. This book is studded with sonnets that thrill with their funk mixed with sophisticated end rhymes. DeFord gives us her streets and people in a roller coaster ride of sense images—dogs, crazies, Laundromat ladies, with a sprinkling of yuppie moms—and seems to be saying we’re all animals in this world, and it’s a glorious and messy street party day and night.” –Barbara Hamby
“Dogs bring out the best in us, and certainly they bring the best poems out of Susie DeFord. And while you'll pick up a lot of dog lore from these poems, the main thing you'll see is how she uses the dog life as a tool to explore her city, her self, and you as well, reader. For to peer into these poems is to look into the face of your favorite pooch and see there a reflection of the person you are but also the one you really want to be, the one who's affectionate, loyal, curious, energetic, someone with a boundless appetite for life—someone very much like a dog, in other words. Here's to Susie and her beautiful poems! And to our four-footed friends everywhere.” –David Kirby
“Susie DeFord’s exhilarating Dogs of Brooklyn brims with the energy of the city (and animals) she loves. The writing is vigorous, the perceptions acute, and the feelings infectious. A terrific debut.” –John Koethe
“Our canine betters, our friends since pre-history, have rarely had the justice done to them that Susie DeFord does in her wonderful poetic investigations into the life of Brooklyn's dogs, into their habits, their idiosyncrasies, and their secret longings.” –Vijay Seshadri