Homopup: Queer Dog Poetry

by Gerry Gomez Pearlberg

Dogs are commonly known as best friends and faithful companions, but they play different, special roles in the lives of queers. Because of this, many gay and lesbian authors have paid homage to their hounds in verse, and the best of these writings are collected in Homopup. In her introduction, Gerry Gomez Pearlberg argues that queer writers have a greater understanding of the pet-human bond not only because of their ability to form nontraditional emotional attachments but because they're "masters at reconfiguring what it means to create a family." Whatever the reason, these poems — ranging from witty to elegiac, sexy to sensuous — form a superb collection of contemporary writing that reveals in moving, often brilliant verse what it's like to live as a gay or lesbian person in today's world.