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Giacometti's Dog
Celebratory or eligiac, these poems record the author’s “two-headed journey” to root herself - geographically and emotionally - in the world. Becker’s poems are from remote and familiar outposts: the watery evanescence of Venice contrasts with the desert of the American Southwest; we lean with her over the rim of a canyon or stand back to study a Giacometti sculpture. From such settings arise poems on the death of a sibling, the consoling power of painting and sculpture; others celebrate the erotic and the capacity of the female body for pleasure and pain.
- GenresPoetry
80 pages, Paperback
First published April 10, 1990
About the author
Robin Becker
29 books14 followersRobin Becker (born 1951) is an American poet, critic, feminist, and professor.
Becker earned a BA and MA at Boston University. She taught for many years at the MIT before returning to Pennsylvania in 1994, where she is Liberal Arts Research Professor of English and Women's Studies at Penn State.
Becker is the author of seven collections of poetry, most recently, Tiger Heron and Domain of Perfect Affection. Her All American Girl won the 1996 Lambda Literary Award in Poetry. In 2000 she was honored with Penn State's George W. Atherton Award for Excellence in Teaching, and she served as Penn State Laureate in 2010-11. Other honours include fellowships from The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies of the City University of New York, The William Steeple Davis Foundation, the Mary Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College, and the Massachusetts Artists Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Becker’s interest in narrative springs from her family background, including a childhood spent listening to her grandmother’s stories, learning from her the nuances of storytelling and her family’s history in Ukraine. Becker was also greatly influenced by the women writers whose poetry was available in the 1970s, including Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Maxine Kumin, Denise Levertov, and Susan Griffin. Poet Stephen Dunn regards Becker as achieving “what may be one of the early twenty first century’s most difficult accomplishments—to write a credible poetry of affirmation. In the doing, she doesn’t pretty up the world. Rather, she finds language that embraces our dualities, our many-selved presences, regularly demonstrating her kind of perfect affection.”
Becker earned a BA and MA at Boston University. She taught for many years at the MIT before returning to Pennsylvania in 1994, where she is Liberal Arts Research Professor of English and Women's Studies at Penn State.
Becker is the author of seven collections of poetry, most recently, Tiger Heron and Domain of Perfect Affection. Her All American Girl won the 1996 Lambda Literary Award in Poetry. In 2000 she was honored with Penn State's George W. Atherton Award for Excellence in Teaching, and she served as Penn State Laureate in 2010-11. Other honours include fellowships from The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies of the City University of New York, The William Steeple Davis Foundation, the Mary Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College, and the Massachusetts Artists Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Becker’s interest in narrative springs from her family background, including a childhood spent listening to her grandmother’s stories, learning from her the nuances of storytelling and her family’s history in Ukraine. Becker was also greatly influenced by the women writers whose poetry was available in the 1970s, including Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Maxine Kumin, Denise Levertov, and Susan Griffin. Poet Stephen Dunn regards Becker as achieving “what may be one of the early twenty first century’s most difficult accomplishments—to write a credible poetry of affirmation. In the doing, she doesn’t pretty up the world. Rather, she finds language that embraces our dualities, our many-selved presences, regularly demonstrating her kind of perfect affection.”
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 21, 2025
Favorite poems: The Problem of Magnification, The Children’s Concert, Sadness in Spring, The Round Barn, Good Boy, The White Place, Fable, Rome of the Imagination
March 13, 2017
I am not a huge poetry reader, but I ran across this in my library, and was intrigued by both the dog angle, and the art/artist angle. An easy to read set of short poems, about life, love, life in the American southwest, more life and love. By easy to read, I mean that there is some sort of narrative in each poem, something to grab on to.
As it turns out, not much at all about a dog or art, but the love and life parts were enjoyable.
As it turns out, not much at all about a dog or art, but the love and life parts were enjoyable.
August 18, 2015
tonight the dog limps from the bushes, one paw aloft, an offering.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews