One of Library Journal 's Best Books of 2025 One of Literary Hub 's Most Anticipated Books of 2025 Doggerel is a revelatory meditation on Blackness, masculinity, and vulnerability from one of poetry’s boldest voices. Reginald Dwayne Betts is our foremost chronicler of the ways prison shapes and transforms American life. In Doggerel , Betts examines this subject through a more prosaic―but equally rich―lens: dogs. He reminds us that, as our lives are broken and put back together, the only witness often barks instead of talks. In these poems, which touch on companionship in its many forms, Betts seamlessly and skillfully deploys the pantoum, ghazal, and canzone, in conversation with artists such as Freddie Gibbs and Lil Wayne. Simultaneously philosophical and playful, Doggerel is a meditation on family, falling in love, friendship, and those who accompany us on our walk through life. Balancing political critique with personal experience, Betts once again shows us “how poems can be enlisted to radically disrupt narrative” (Dan Chiasson, The New Yorker )―and, in doing so, reveals the world anew. “. . . every story becomes a multiplication, If the naming is filled less with names than With the best parts, the barking & everything Else, because who among us hasn’t been As mangy as a rescue, even on our best Days, desiring mostly to be loved.” ―from “Rings” "[ Doggerel ] offers satisfyingly rich meditations on companionship, loss, and more." ― New York Times Book Review " Doggerel is a triumph of surprising moments and passionate reflections." ― Michael Ruzicka, Booklist "Political critique and personal reflection inform these poems on the many forms of companionship, drawing on traditional forms (pantoum, ghazal, and canzone) and alluding to rappers including Freddie Gibbs and Lil Wayne." ― Publishers Weekly " Doggerel is an apt name for this lovely collection, with the canine-hidden-in-plain-sight in its title and coursing through so many of the poems. Betts manages to capture essences―of memory, of hope or loss, of oft-overlooked everydayness―in a way that feels surprising and familiar at once." ― Dr. Alexandra Horowitz, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know Praise for Reginald Dwayne Betts “[Reginald Dwayne Betts] writes masterfully, in various forms. He also illustrates the transformative power of love.” ― Elizabeth Lund, Washington Post “Searing. . . . This is a powerful work of lyric art. It is also a tour de force indictment of the carceral industrial state.” ― ECarolyn Forché, New York Times Book Review “[Reginald Dwayne] Betts is a hero to men on the inside. . . . He’s a hero to anyone who believes redemption can be had and is not some abstract idea.” ― John J. Lennon, Poetry Foundation “Reginald Dwayne Betts animates and really embodies the minutiae of revision in this once-in-a-lifetime art object. . . . Betts’s artistry shows and proves a necessary breaking and blurring of the lines between wandering into yesterday, wondering into tomorrow, and wrestling with the funk of today. Betts has written the twenty-first-century book that will dictate how freedom, power, and consequence are written about until the sun says enough. It is that good.” ― Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy : An American Memoir Reginald Dwayne Betts is the author of three books of poetry, including the best-selling Felon . He is a poet, lawyer, and the founder and CEO of Freedom Reads. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut, with his dog.