The Bark of the Dog

"The syllables ring out bright and sharp, as if they had been hammered on an anvil from the same molten core, and their rhythms coalesce into lines of quiet lyric beauty . . . His poems are neither final statements about reality nor mystifications of it. They are quicksilver inquiries, attempts to meet the world on human terms, ever 'so slightly.' In the book's best poems, Gilfillan's language is located and concrete, his diction crisp and precise."

~John Palattella, The Nation

"The Bark of the Dog's evocative, songlike poems encode memories, foreign expressions, and natural nomenclature in a fragmented, associative manner . . . Returning to this poem is like returning to a rich, strange place we are still getting to know."

~Dustin Simpson, Chicago Review