Gil Lamont, Mainstream Magazine, Spring, 1997
"I can't idly browse through this book, not even for this review. Everywhere Blehert's poems grab me by the scruff of the neck and demand to be read aloud, or be read quietly to myself, but be read. It's like eating potato chips, you can't stop at just one... This is too good a book to keep selfishly. Buy two, one for you, one for your friends, and be grateful that Blehert has so accurately let us look at ourselves too, through our foibles as cats' caregivers and surrogate parents and servants"

Mary Ann Grossman, Book Critic, Saint Paul Pioneer Press, July 20, 1997
"Blehert's sense of fun is obvious in two new collections... Even the titles of these books make you smile... [His] poems are not simple commentaries on his two dogs and three cats. Rather, he uses relationships with the animals to get at issues such as love, death, joy and alienation."

Book Description
Humorous and witty poems about cats, revealing their TRUE nature - as at once our guardians and avenging angels.

From the Publisher
Dean Blehert knows ALMOST everything about cats. He has never eaten one that he knows of, but it would probably taste like chicken. He has also not yet been eaten by a cat, only tasted.

From the Author
Do cats feel "love" for us? I think so, but it's not always easy to detect. And until one has learned to tune them in, it's fascinating to observe how, as quickly as swift-blown clouds snuff a sunny day, a cat shifts from a cuddly or dignified friend to a ghoul to an icy vacuum - as fast as we can change our minds. Thus cats teach us the extent to which we create the world about us. The dog steadily presents us with our own image, while the cat dazzles us with intricate modulations from image to empty mirror - like the shimmer of an iridescent butterfly wing.

About the Author
Dean Blehert has had five poetry books published and is working on a sixth. He also publishes his own subscription poetry letter, Deanotations, which has come out every two months since August, 1984. Currently Deanotations has about 300 paid subscribers, and has often been praised for its quirky viewpoints and slightly offbeat humor. Deanotations has readers in most of the 50 states and in Canada, England, Germany, Israel and Australia. He's had poems published or accepted for publication in New York Quarterly, Kansas Quarterly Review, Crosscurrents, Bogg, Visions, Lip Service, Gold Dust, Dark Horse, Modern Haiku, Carousel, Light, The Lyric, Krax, Orphic Lute, Brussel Sprouts, Stroker, Implosion, Haiku Headlines, Reston Review, Carousel, View From The Loft, The Listening Eye, Gyst, Plains Poetry Journal, Minimus, Potomac Review and many others. Issue 55 of New York Quarterly ran his article, "Shrink-rapt Poetry", in its State of Poetry in America series. He's been featured at readings in Calif., New York, D.C., Texas, Maryland and Virginia. He has done over 25 radio interviews and one TV interview featuring his most recent books.

Excerpted from No Cats Have Been Maimed or Mutilated During the Making of This Book by Dean Blehert. Copyright © 1996. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
From the lawn two houses down a big red cat/ spots me coming, uncoils ever so slowly, moseys to the curb, vanishes beneath a car,/ peers out from behind a front tire, looks away,/ earning the Oscar for best performance/ in "I Don't Care About You - I Just Decided/ It Would Be Nicer Here."

ANNOTATION

Humorous and witty poems about cats, revealing their TRUE nature - as at once our guardians and avenging angels.

SYNOPSIS

Humorous and witty poems about cats, revealing their TRUE nature - as at once our guardians and avenging angels.

FROM THE CRITICS

REVIEW: "Blehert's sense of fun is obvious in two new collections... Even the titles of these books make you smile... [His] poems are not simple commentaries on his two dogs and three cats. Rather, he uses relationships with the animals to get at issues such as love, death, joy and alienation." (Mary Ann Grossman, Book Critic, Saint Paul Pioneer Press, July 20, 1997)

Gil Lamont