Poetry / Mark Doty

Yesterday I finished the book Dog Years by Mark Doty. Oh. my. It’s an elegant memoir about his dogs, Beau and Arden - the loving and the losing of them. Although it had me in tears often, they were the kind of tears evoked when you have your own emotions and experience mirrored in another’s story. Pain is evoked or renewed, but there is healing from it as well. 

Mark Doty is a poet and writes with a poet’s keen ability to observe and pierce through the superficial. And to use lovely turns of phrase. The book’s flow is unusual, it meanders and strays from the linear.  From some of the Amazon reviews, I can see that is problematical for some, as is the poetic sensibility Doty brings to this work. I loved it, though.

And I loved this poem, too - the way he captured what I like to think of as Dog Mind.

Golden Retrievals
By Mark Doty

Fetch? Balls and sticks capture my attention
seconds at a time. Catch? I don’t think so.
Bunny, tumbling leaf, a squirrel who’s—oh
joy—actually scared. Sniff the wind, then

                                ----read the complete poem here




That link takes you to the Poetry Foundation website.  Bookmark it!  It’s filled with treasure.

Bright blessings and namaste,
‘Zann