In her fifth collection of poems, Ellen Doré Watson lends her supple voice to a multiplicity of characters, each with his or her own particular dilemma, distraction, or disarray: Junie biking home to find a new mom, Edur wondering whether he’s anyone’s father, a pregnant teen starving herself to lose the fetus, or the widower Lew buoyed by a vision of his wife after her death. With a novelist’s finesse and a poet’s details, Watson creates lives that resonate with poignancy and urgency.

In Dogged Hearts Ellen Doré Watson demonstrates a capacious talent for invention and empathy and, with her incomparable linguistic brio, gives us an unforgettable look at how loss and disconnection can usher in chance-to-change reverie and unexpected veerings towards life.

Ellen Doré Watson was hailed by Library Journal as one of “24 Poets for the 21st Century.” Her collections of poetry include Ladder Music and We Live in Bodies (Alice James, 2001 and 2002), This Sharpening (Tupelo, 2006), and most recently Dogged Hearts (book and audio book: Tupelo, 2010). She has also translated a dozen books, including The Alphabet in the Park: Selected Poems of Adélia Prado (Wesleyan University Press, 1990) and works by Brazilian poet Ignácio de Loyola Brandão as well as contemporary Arabic poetry (co-translated with Saadi Simawe). She is the Poetry and Translation Editor for The Massachusetts Review and the director of The Poetry Center at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.