Arden is the first and older dog and Beau the second one, a younger dog for the writer Mark Doty and his partner Wally. Arden stays put next to Wally while he ails, and the dog exhibits grief but also acceptance after Wally passes away. Beau is the younger dog, more lively and more boisterous, but this is for the better, because Beau animates Arden, urging Arden to act and feel younger. Of the two dogs, however, Beau is the first one to die. Arden, too, toward the end of the book, passes away. Doty’s second partner Paul shares Doty’s love of dogs, and Paul, too, forms a strong relationship with the dogs.

After his dogs Beau and Arden have passed away, the author comes across a street dog in San Miguel, and although he wants to take him home after he learns he legally can, he can’t find the dog. This is the way he closes that chapter: “Animal presence remain for me, as they have always been, a door toward feeling and understanding. The dog on Calle Canal awakens me; she shows me that I have come through something now. I write to bless her delicate head, the paw raised in hope. How should we know ourselves, except in the clarifying mirror of some other gaze?”

dog lovers who have lost a dog and those who have suffered other losses. The book has a hopeful outlook, because the writer overcomes everything and anything and accepts life as is. Rather than losing himself in grief, Mark Doty celebrates the life of those who have lived, man or dog alike.

the proficiency with language, articulation skills, and the experience with poetic expression of the writer. At times, the style is simple, straightforward, yet memorable. At other times, it is highly poetic. No wonder, because Doty is a poet and a writer as well as a teacher of creative writing.

read Doty's other books, especially his poetry.

happy because we can experience life and rejoice in what little time we and our loved ones have on earth.
Having said that, a few more photos of the two dogs would add to the enjoyment of the book.

Mark Doty was born in 1953. His books are: School of the Arts, Source, Sweet Machine, Atlantis, My Alexandria, Still Life with Oysters and Lemon, Heaven's Coast, Firebird, Objects and Intimacy (2000), and Dog Years. His writing and poetry have won numerous awards and prizes, one of them Great Britain’s T.S. Eliot Prize, the first to be given to a US poet. Mark Doty teaches at the University of Houston, Texas.

Dog years, despite the subject matter, does not fall into the sappiness most anyone who might undertake to write such a book could do. The emotion is not heavy-handed at all, but the suggestion of it and the bigger philosophical concepts are there. Some passages in the book read like, or rather are, poetry, especially inside the sections in italics, the writer’s entr’actes.

Dog Years is a caring book told with the best possible language tools and probably by the best possible person who can tell such a story. If you are a dog lover and haven’t read this book yet, I believe, you are missing something really great.

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Created May 18, 2007 at 12:40pm • Submit your own review...