Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins spoke at length about his latest book, Dog Show, a compact collection of 25 poems paired with watercolors by Pamela Sztybel, during an interview on WBUR with host Peter O’Dowd. The hour included Collins reading several excerpts and discussing the formal choices that shape the volume’s domestic, canine-focused vignettes.

Across the broadcast, which listeners can find on WBUR’s site and which aired on Nov. 21, 2025, Collins discussed themes from the book, including close observation of dogs and their behavior. He described the poems as the result of sustained close observation: the way a dog moves through a household, the particulars of breathing and tail movement, and those tiny acts that make a pet a persistent subject for a poet. He read selections aloud in a conversational register, allowing cadence and plain speech to reveal what he called modest revelations.

Collins’ lines are often wry and tactile. He layers comic bluntness over homely description — a line in the book, delivered to sharp effect on the radio, runs: “I never liked you—not one bit.” Elsewhere he uses longer, slightly rueful sentences to sketch behavior that mixes affection with exasperation: “If only she did not shove the cat aside every morning and eat all his food what a model of self-containment she would be.” Those passages, Collins said in the interview, depend on a balance between punch line and the quieter material that frames it.

The poems frequently turn on repetition and small motion. Collins pointed listeners to moments such as “the way the dog trots out the front door every morning” and “the twin portals of her steady breathing, followed only by the plume of her tail.” In performance he let the rhythm of ordinary speech shape those images, so that the poems feel like observations made in real time rather than abstract declarations.

Visually, Dog Show is structured as a pairing of short lyric and spare wash of paint. Pamela Sztybel’s watercolors do not illustrate single narratives; they move alongside Collins’ poems, offering a visual counterpoint. Collins described the arrangement as allowing a poem and a painting to occupy the same page and the same attentional field without one strictly explaining the other. The effect, he suggested during the interview, is that each medium amplifies the other’s focus on gesture and pause.

Throughout the conversation with O’Dowd, Collins returned to the idea that a single household animal can supply repeated subject matter and subtle variation. He used brief anecdotes to show how a dog’s daily routines — a trot out the door, the leaning head, the way it claims food — can be mined for different tones, from bemused to affectionate to mildly exasperated. The readings on WBUR made clear how a casual, seemingly throwaway line can reshape a listener’s sense of domestic space.

Listeners who want to hear Collins’ readings and his discussion of the book’s structure can access the full interview on WBUR’s website. In print, the collection keeps its poems compact and concentrated; in the broadcast performance, Collins’ plainspoken delivery underscored the close observational work behind each concise lyric. Dog Show: Poems is described by its publisher and booksellers as a collection of 25 dog-themed poems accompanied by Pamela Sztybel’s watercolor portraits, celebrating the roles dogs play in our lives.

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Original reporting: view the original article.