Cold Dogs

Author: Zan de Parry

Publisher: The Song Cave (2024)

The poems in Zan de Parry’s debut collection, Cold Dogs, teeter between deadpan humor and heartbreak, producing a new homegrown surrealism. Coupled with the poet's deceptively simple line drawings, these questioning and conversational poems operate on the sidelines of reason, dictated by human instinct. "He gently folded my head into my chest / And my face into my groin / Friend, let me show you an informal way / to achieve dreams." For readers familiar with the poems of Richard Brautigan and James Tate, Parry similarly travels in the bizarre, absurd, and existential, populating his poems with brilliant moments of heartfelt reverie and amusement. The matter-of-factness of the world perceived in Cold Dogs introduces a compelling and exciting sensibility to contemporary poetry.