Dog Years

Starred review from March 12, 2007
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.

May 28, 2007
Doty brings a mellow, soft-spoken dignity to the narration of his memoir, which chronicles the lives of the distinguished poet and author’s beloved retrievers, Arden and Beau. The narrative thread comes together in the form of essays evoking the joy, tenderness, pain and loss in the compressed canine life spans of the two dogs. The four-legged drama takes shape amid the backdrop of Doty’s human journey of grief and resiliency, particularly in regard to the loss of his longtime partner to AIDS and his subsequent glide into a new romantic relationship. Given Doty’s literary pedigree, it should come as no surprise that he takes a meandering path in the autobiographic story line, pausing frequently to offer philosophical insights. The thoughtful pace and tone of Doty’s audio performance brings to mind the spoken-word journals of NPR’s This American Life
. Audiences eager to cut to the chase for a classic inspirational dog saga may lose patience, but discerning listeners will appreciate Doty’s perspective. Simultaneous release with the HarperCollins hardcover (Reviews, Mar. 12).

March 1, 2014

Poet and essayist Doty's memoir combines elegy, prose, and criticism to describe the 16 years shared with the two dogs that completed the family he created with his dying partner. His style is complex, formal, and never sentimental as he compares his dogs' decline with the concurrent human losses in his life. (LJ 1/07)

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2007
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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)

Starred review from January 1, 2007
Poet Doty ("Still Life with Oysters and Lemon") celebrates the 16 lovely years his two beloved 70-pound Labs, Beau and Arden, gave him, but there's an ill wind blowing through the memoir. It concerns the inevitable truth that most dog owners only dimly acceptthat they will probably outlive their canine companions. Against a backdrop of devastating human loss, both personal (the death of his partner) and public (9/11), Doty bears witness to the inexorable decline of his beloved retrievers. He well understands the risks he takes in writing about his pets while human calamity unfolds. Even so, he notes, "someone was here, an intelligence and sensibility, a complex of desires and memories, habits and expectations]gone from the world forever." This sad, sad book represents a curious blend of memoir, journal, literary criticism, and prose elegy, and it borrows some structural elements from drama and poetry. Its tone is plangent, its complex formal structure is like memory itself, and its exquisite pace reminds one of nothing so much as a stroll in the park with Fido. Poignant, intelligent, and quite simply superb; highly recommended for most collections, although the Emily Dickinson criticism may make it too literary for the "Marley & Me" crowd. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 11/15/06.]Robert Eagan, Windsor P.L., Ont.

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.