Dog Years: A Memoir by Mark Doty
2007, HarperCollins Publishers
For the first time ever, I hold a book and recognize the small town street on the cover. I recognize the curve in the road, the brown house to the left, and the Capes further along. Those two dogs are most certainly walking up Pearl Street in Provincetown, Massachusetts. I know because I first walked that very street while studying at the Fine Arts Work Center, also located on Pearl Street some three years ago
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Published in 2007, Mark Doty's Dog Years: A memoir is an homage to Arden, the black Lab on the left, and Beau, the fluffy tailed golden retriever on the right. (Arden actually makes an appearance in two literary memoirs, Doty’s and that of Doty’s one-time husband Paul Lisicky in Lisicky’s 2020 My Life at the End of the World.)
Anyone who has lived with and loved a dog will relish Dog Years and savor the fact that a black lab factors so prominently in a slice of Provincetown’s literary history. People who love Provincetown will appreciate that in addition to cover art depicting Pearl Street, Doty resided at number 19 Pearl Street for a number of years. In chapter sixteen, he writes about a Pearl Street neighbor.
The old man who lived on my block in Provincetown devised a method to help his ancient springer spaniel walk, when the dog became too old and weak to lift himself up. Antony made a rope harness that he’d slip around Charlie’s torso, and he’d haul the old sad sack up, a few inches off the ground, and then the dog could move his legs on his own, and together they’d go for a walk.
This always seemed to me a synthesis of love and art; craft found a way, for a while, to keep the beloved other in the world.
Although much of Dog Years takes place in Provincetown, other sections depict Doty and the dogs in New York City. The book mentions Doty’s lover Wally, who died in Provincetown during the AIDS epidemic. As is the case in much of this book, Doty reflects on how a dog’s life is tied so closely with that of its “person.”
I’m walking Arden, our elderly black retriever, on the streets in front of the apartment. Arden’s been with me since he was a pup, himself retrieved from an animal shelter in Vermont. The fifteen years of his life represent the story of that decade and a half of mine; he’s outlived Wally, and came, after a bit of convincing, to be totally devoted to Paul, the man in my life now…”
This scene that follows shows Arden and Doty’s final moments with Wally.
The night Wally died— that wind, from Emily Dickinson’s poem, blowing through our bed— Arden had been sleeping with him all day, except for a couple of quick, cold walks. He was entirely gone into his sleep, until maybe fifteen minutes before the end of Wally’s life— then, suddenly, he jumped, fell off the bed with a loud whunk on the old wooden floorboards, and slunk off into the next room.
In 2008, the year after Dog Years came out, Doty won the National Book Award for Poetry. As a memoirist, he published two published volumes prior to Dog Years.