In this rich, rewarding collection, Josh Dugat pays tribute to the varied matters of the world—subjects both seemingly simple yet expansive, intimate yet universal. As reflected in its title, the many poems in Great and Small: Poems (Able Muse Press 2025) luminously ring with celebration and observation of a myriad of things. Dugat casts his talented poet’s eye on his subjects with a precision and reflection certain to ignite his readers’ own intrigue with the abundance of their world. Given that the title might well be borrowed from James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small series (or from Psalm 104:24-25), there is a wealth of animal life in these poems, revealed with awareness and reverence.
Dugat notes that his collection is a distinctly Southern book. Featuring poems composed and set in Texas, Alabama, and Louisiana, the work addresses themes pertinent to the region: from the tragedy of mass shootings in El Paso to a reckoning with enslaved labor in the construction of Thomas Merton’s Gethsemane monastery in Kentucky. He further explores the region’s complexity by humanizing the Angola Prison Rodeo and unearthing the story of a young Texan identified in the Equal Justice Initiative’s (EJI) National Memorial for Peace and Justice. As Dugat observes too, the poems also include new takes on old stories—reimagining mythic and Biblical figures—and skillful variations on traditional forms.
Sensory perceptions are amplified throughout the verses. The world Dugat conveys is filled with the sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and tactile touches of his native South, all captured in fine and lovely detail. From the “crowing limbs in light” in the poem “Lightning Tree, Lavaca County,” to the “the sound of bird bones / breaking” in “How I Come to Bare,” these poems are gloriously vivid and brimming with energy.
This focus on sensory perception is evident from the very first poem, “Close Your Eyes,” where the reader is encouraged to experience a shell with closed eyes: “The word you feel is shell. Lift it / from the paper. Let it roll down / to the well of your palm, and rest.”
Other poems share in this wealth of sensory experience. In “Six Months Before Marriage,” he writes: “Already, you’ve begun / to taste like peaches”. In “Magnolia Thief,” a bowl with a magnolia bloom “spills open / floods the kitchen” until his wife exclaims, “Come here, / you’ve got to smell this.”
While occasionally allusive, the poems are generally accessible and enriched by their meditative qualities. From a garbage collector to dead bugs on a windshield to a trapped, drowned alligator turtle, not all of Dugat’s subjects would be heralded for conspicuous beauty. Yet, Dugat finds in them a transcendent value and crafts them into something worthy and beautiful.
Here, too, are tender and heartfelt touches, such as descriptions of his two-year-old son playing in frigid water in the poem “Hoverflies.” In the cold “water pooled atop the falls,” the son is: “Our miniature / skinny-dipper, giddy for the rush / of rosy feet – sting made sugary / by trust of warmth to come.” In “Birmingham Botanical Garden,” Dugat contemplates his son while “still / four months / from his birth.” Even as he tries to resist talking to his unborn child, he notes that “I’ll always want / to ask what you are thinking…”.
Though Dugat acknowledges in “Attentative” that “The doomsday / sayer’s day comes due,” he focuses more often than not on the celebratory wonders of life. In that same poem, his Pan “toots / his manic music / just for you / to dance and dance.”
While he exercises restraint with his similes, they are potent when employed. For instance, the dead alligator turtle in “Fossel” is “easing toward us / like a beehive best left sleeping.” Here too in the poem “Late December, Lavaca County,” there “is the Brahma bull who “…wears / his pointed ears like vestments / of a priest who dresses every morning / even though his shape of God / will always be misshapen.”
Alliteration is a frequently used technique that enhances Dugat’s imagery. His alliteration is so finely tuned that it never sounds artificial or clanks with overuse. For example, in “Casting the Stone,” Dugat writes of the “[s]oundless shape that seeping minerals make.” And in “Lightning Tree, Lavaca County,” the alliterative phrase “shower’s splinter / swallowed by the post oak” precedes the lines “wet as winter ended. / In weeks, I warmed / to what it was / we kept….”
Within his vibrant images and lyrical phrases, readers will also find truth and philosophy. The garbage collector in “At 6 a.m., the Tinman” knows that the “heart can only hide / so long from what it will become.” And in “Notes Recovered from a Search for Sanctity,” he writes: “It is hard to find a place / to hide from God. It is hard / to find a place beyond the world.”
All in all, these are wonderful, evocative, and potent poems teeming with awareness and a poet’s keen reflection. To see the things of this world through Dugat’s words is to see them up-close and glorious, whether the object is great or small.
Joshua Dugat
Originally from Texas, Josh Dugat holds graduate degrees in Geography and Creative Writing from The University of Alabama. He currently lives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, with his wife and children, and he teaches at The University of Alabama. His writing has appeared in The Literary Review, The Christian Century, TriQuarterly, and America among many others. He has been the recipient of fellowships or residencies from Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Arrowmont School of Craft, the Western Folklife Center, and the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States. A former park ranger, Josh enjoys making woodblock prints and two-stepping, and spending time in his garden with his wife and children.
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