89 books like Collected Poems of Robert Service

I love this book because her poems reflect the various stages of love from the very beginning, “love at first sight,” the initial excitement of a love affair, through the eventual boredom of steady relations to the heartbreak when a relationship ends, and sometimes lifelong grief. They are a constant reminder of my life and love experiences.

Anne Carson is a Canadian poet who wonderfully expresses the trauma associated with loving another person, the angst of a failing relationship, and the bittersweet emotions once the relationship has ended.

Most everyone who has fallen in love and lost cannot help but relate to the words in her poems.

This is a song rather than a book, but the words to a song are a form of poetry, and Joni Mitchell writes that song based on 40 years of enduring love in a marriage with her lifelong companion and captures the longing when lovers are apart for long periods of time.

I liked this book because the titles of the poems are distinctive in that they represent specific latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates on the map.

Each of these sites gives an insight into the content of the various poems, reminding me to believe I was in love with different people.

I did a lot of research before writing my book. I’ve always written realistic fiction inspired by real people and places. But this novel was driven by a dog, my first Alaskan Malamute whom I called Yukon Sally.

I’ve always had a dog, some kind of Collie from a farm or an animal shelter. After my youngest daughter flew off to university I thought we could spring for a purebred and chose a Malamute because they come from Arctic wolves.

Intrigued by Yukon’s wolf-like traits I researched wolves then the Malamute breed and took Yukon Sally to the Yukon to study sled dogs and the background of the Klondike Gold Rush which was the glory days of the Malamute sled dogs.

While there, I discovered Bob Hayes’ book and learned some more important facts about wolves. They do not need to be culled. Read it and see why. 

Robert Service became a bank clerk in the Klondike Gold Rush. But that was to support his life as a poet.

At one time he lived and wrote in a log cabin now standing across the road from the house in Dawson City where Pierre Berton grew up. Pierre Berton was born long after Robert Service, but the poems of Robert Service have been popular for generations.

They portray the life and characters of the Yukon around the time of the gold rush. Pierre Berton gave many public performances reciting the whole of Service’s The Shooting of Dan McGrew. No one could do it better. I joined others rising to our feet in applause and whistles.

There is a Malamute Saloon named after a line in that famous poem which I took my Yukon Sally to in Dawson City. My photo of that brings tears to my eyes.    

Author Jennifer Duncan an adventurous person herself, went to the Yukon a hundred years after the Klondike Gold Rush and lived in Dawson City, now a picturesque historical heritage town where the saloons and dancehalls replay the raucous social times of the 1890s gold rush.

Her book gives a real feel for the place and the remarkable women who grappled their way across the continent and north to the land of the midnight sun. They turned themselves into smart businesswomen and made fortunes without digging for gold.

A diligent researcher, Duncan casts a new light on who first discovered gold in the Klondike. Not the American Carmack but his Indigenous wife, Kate who let him take the credit for the discovery. He later denied her as his wife and abandoned her.   

This impeccably researched book by Yukon historian Michael Gates provides the backstory to the 1896 discovery that kicked off the Klondike gold rush. Small numbers of gold-seekers began prowling the creeks of Alaska and the Yukon as early as 1873 and their stories are every bit as fascinating as the stories of those who followed. These men, and the occasional woman, were a particularly hardy lot who put themselves through incredible hardship in hopes of finding a fortune. They were perfectly positioned to beat the rush to the Klondike goldfields and some of them did clean up. But regardless of whether they struck it rich, all of these risk-takers and dreamers helped set the stage for the big event.

I love this book for its fabulous sense of place, nonstop action, and realistic depiction of the rough-and-tumble Yukon during the 1890s Gold Rush.

The protagonist may be a dog but Buck, the good-heard Saint Bernard we meet as affable and innocent puppy, is I truly believe one of the most unforgettable characters in the history of adventure novels. His transition to a feral state is utterly believable as the book unfolds the darkness that lies at the heart of all too many men and the often violent chain of events that causes Buck to seek a new life.

I have read this book three times, and each time, it continues to amaze me. 

Jack London is by far my favorite writer of youth-accessible literature, and White Fang is one of his best. My senses came alive as I read about a wolf’s struggle to survive and adapt to changes in its environment. Reading his description of a world through the experience of an animal was transformative. The Klondike became a real and deadly place, vibrant and alive.