Dog Years: A Memoir (P.S.) [Paperback]

Mark Doty (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 8, 2008 | Series: P.S.

When Mark Doty decides to adopt a dog as a companion for his dying partner, he brings home Beau, a large, malnourished golden retriever in need of loving care. Joining Arden, the black retriever, to complete their family, Beau bounds back into life. Before long, the two dogs become Doty's intimate companions, and eventually the very life force that keeps him from abandoning all hope during the darkest days.

Dog Years is a poignant, intimate memoir interwoven with profound reflections on our feelings for animals and the lessons they teach us about living, love, and loss.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Award-winning memoirist (Firebird) and poet (School of the Arts) Doty explores, with compassion and intelligence, the complicated, loving territory inhabited by devoted dogs and their loyal humans. In 1994, when the author's longtime lover was dying of AIDS, beloved pet Arden kept the surviving partner afloat. A new adoptee, the rambunctious Beau, in his "sloppy dog way," becomes a part of the tribe and carries some of the burden of grief. Doty says Beau "carried something else for me too, which was my will to live." In a time of devastating pain, as well as in happier times, Doty's two dogs are the "secret heroes of my own vitality." The dog characters in the book are irresistible, and the arcs of their lives are delineated with the tenderness and passion of the truly smitten. Arden's quiet nobility and slow decline breaks the heart, while Beau's goofy enthusiasm peaks with youth and mellows in illness. With a marvelous ability to present the pain of mourning with a poet's delicate hand, and an irrepressible instinct for joy, Doty delivers a soulful love story which illuminates no less than the big human mysteries: attachment, death, grief, loyalty, happiness. The book nimbly sidesteps sentimentality and lands squarely on a philosophical, inquisitive tone as intellectually evocative as it is emotionally resonant. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

To be loved by Doty, as a human or a canine, is to be elevated into a realm of utter glory, where one is cherished and cradled, sheltered and supported, and, most of all, where one's very essence is acknowledged and appreciated in a manner both simple and sublime. In his latest elegant and elegiac memoir, poet Doty recounts how the love of two dogs, Arden and Beau, sustained him during times of his most grievous losses, and how he, in turn, came to nurse them through their inevitable years of failing health. On the brink of a life-threatening depression, Doty recognized the necessity of caring for his beloved dogs, which then metamorphosed into a life-affirming realization that he was, in fact, the one being attended. Sprinkled among poignant and merry anecdotes about typical and peculiar doggie behavior are Doty's tender yet cogent reflections on the underlying truths such conduct reveals about the canine species, observations that transcendently celebrate the essential connection between man and pet. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial; 1ST edition (April 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061171018
• ISBN-13: 978-0061171017
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #84,161 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #22 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Pets & Animal Care > Pet Loss

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

64 of 68 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Dogs mean more to us than "just pets" March 16, 2007

By cdkscully

Format:Hardcover

Mark Doty handled the other side of the story that "Marley and Me" didn't touch on. He spoke to us from the dog's point of view and how we think they feel.

With every sentence that I read, I kept thinking to myself, "YES! That's what my dog does!" or "I know that is what my dog is thinking!" He truly spoke to the pet moms and dads and siblings in the voice of the dog.

Mr. Doty explained that dogs are more than just pets to some and sometimes others cannot understand how important they are in our lives. They are there for all major life changes and are affected by them just as much as we are.

This is a wonderful book that dog parents and siblings can relate to - from the beginning with the adoption of his dogs until the last, sad, final day which every pet owner dreads. He captured the way we think dogs think perfectly. This book is sure to be a hit amongst pet owners and pet lovers. It's one you cannot put down until the last page is read.

40 of 42 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Memoir From One of Our Best Poets March 29, 2007

By H. F. Corbin TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Mark Doty in DOG YEARS has written a sometimes sad and always deeply moving beautiful memoir about loss, grief and the comfort that animals, in this instance Beau, a golden retriever, and Arden, a black retriever, bring to the sick and dying and those who remain. Mr. Doty is nothing if not opinionated: sentimentality is a mask for anger; "compassion for animals is an excellent predictor of one's ability to care for one's fellow human beings;" "no death equals another;" "the wounds of loss, the nicks and cuts made by our own sense of powerlessness, must form a sort of carapace, an armor." The kindgom of heaven may be "the realm of paradox, "attachment and detachment," memory and forgetfulness, "everything and nothing." Whether you agree with Mr. Doty's conclusions hardly matters although he is convincing and persuasive. What is just as important is that the reader is swept along by the writer's precise and beautiful language. (We should expect no less from a first rate poet.) So on September 11 the hole in the north twin tower reminds him of "an unfamiliar continent in a school geography book. A version of Australia." New York is a "pierced city." An old woman who runs a kennel in Key West has a voice "shredded by decades of Chesterfields." An old house in Provincetown has "straggly irises" in the yard. Furthermore, Mr. Doty strews gems from the greatest of American poets, Emily Dickinson, throughout his narrative. Just as his canine friends overlook nothing on their daily scavenger hunts, Mr. Doty's reader must use the same care for he skims this book at his peril.

Whether you are a dog lover or not, DOG YEARS is not to be missed.... It is in the league of other recent nonfiction books on grief: Elizabeth Edwards' SAVING GRACES: FINDING SOLACE AND STRENGTH FROM FRIENDS AND STRANGERS, Joan Didion's THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING and Calvin Trillin's ABOUT ALICE. It reminded me of another poet Wendell Berry's fine short story "Mike" about the death of a dog and is every bit as good as my favorite nonfiction book by Doty: STILL LIVE WITH OYSTERS AND LEMON; ON OBJECTS AND INTIMACY.

Reading Mr. Doty is always a joy, regardless of his subject matter. Read more ›

38 of 40 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars About dogs, the human condition and, uh, the dog condition March 23, 2007

By D. W WISELY

Format:Hardcover

Those in the sad condition of not already being aware of Mr. Doty's splendid body of work may be tempted to overlook this book. Readers who know Mark Doty's work will already know that they are in for more than just another book about dogs. Last night in Harvard Square, I attended a reading by Mark Doty from this fine book. It turns out to be, of course, a set of meditations on dogs and their relationship with their owners, but also of grief and loss. No one writes about the latter with more grace and wisdom than Mark Doty. Last night, he reminded us, "The agreement to participate in this life is a pact with grief." This book is highly recommended.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars More than a book about dogs March 19, 2007

By A Picky Reader

Format:Hardcover

I don't even own a dog and I loved this book. It's about love and loss and finding joy in small moments. Doty is an amazing writer who can bring tears to your eyes and make you laugh out loud, all within the same page. Highly recommended--whether you're a pet owner or not!

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A New Meaning for 'A Dog's Life': Poetry in Prose from Mark Doty April 17, 2007

By Grady Harp HALL OF FAMETOP 50 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

DOG YEARS is one of those memorable books that will find a place not on the library shelf of the home, but instead on the bedside table. Mark Doty, one of America's most sophisticated and endearing poets, shares his experiences of his time with his two dogs, Arden and Beau, times of trial, loss, grieving, joy and mutual dependency, and in doing so he offers one of the more sensitive memoirs written.

Doty relates the gradual passing of his beloved Wally who succumbed to AIDS and in doing so introduces us to the manner in which both Arden and Beau became integral parts of the household and indeed participated in the grieving process with Doty. And then after a year's passing Doty speaks of his new life with fellow writer Paul Lisicky and how the two animals integrated into the new family and ultimately died surrounded by the support and love of the two men. If all of this seems like a rather placid or even maudlin story, then the reader has not had the joy of exploring the poetic and writing gifts of Mark Doty. He has a sly wit: 'Me, dramatize? Just a little. I don't mean that I display an overly emotive surface, not that sort of drama. Rather that I am prone to interpretation, and to reading the moment as cosmic evidence, quickly turning things into metaphor'. He understands the human condition: 'Hope is leaven; it makes things rise without effort'. He has experienced grief and bolsters those who have shouldered such experiences; 'Life without an element of despair in it would seem an empty enterprise, a shallow little song-and-dance on the surface of experience. Despair has about it a bracing sense of actuality....'.

But we know of Doty's gifts as an artist.... DOG YEARS proves his ability to understand the capacity of dogs to comprehend situations, find strength to share with their masters, demonstrate the meaning of unconditional love, and to provide solace in ways that are beyond human capacity. This extraordinarily beautiful book speaks to all who love animals, all who have experienced death in any form, and all of us who deeply admire great writing. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, April 07 Read more ›