Here's my paper on the following poem: "Golden Retrievals" by Mark Doty
Mark Doty- "Golden Retrievals"
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
I’m off again: muck, pond, ditch, residue
of any thrillingly dead thing. And you?
Either you’re sunk in the past, half our walk,
thinking of what you never can bring back,
or else you’re off in some fog concerning
—tomorrow, is that what you call it? My work:
to unsnare time’s warp (and woof!), retrieving,
my haze-headed friend, you. This shining bark,
a Zen master’s bronzy gong, calls you here,
entirely, now: bow-wow, bow-wow, bow-wow.
Paper (this is probably the finished version too): Mark Doty’s “Golden Retrievals” is based on the running thoughts of a dog, who creates a tone of happiness and also seriousness because of the contrast between the speaker and the author’s capacity to view life. Mark Doty uses a plethora of images, an oxymoron, metaphors, and personification to express the deep loss and confusion that he feels after a tragic death in his life. The poem is in the form of a Petrarchan sonnet because it contains fourteen lines and a problem- solution, but twists the traditional form and uses slant rhyme to further portray that the speaker is an unorganized canine.
The canine speaker and his owner are out on a walk and the speaker is on a great adventure, while his master is lost in thought about “…tomorrow, is that what you call it?” (line 10). The speaker’s tone is fun and carefree because he is distracted by everything that comes past him, “Bunny, tumbling leaf, a squirrel/…muck, pond, ditch, residue…” (3-5). When the speaker turns his attention to the owner the tone grows more serious because the owner is not as excited about the day. The speaker does not understand that the owner is worried about the aspects of life, such as the past and future, and the dog does his best to snap him out of it. The speaker as a dog also shows how animals, though they cannot grasp the concept of life, help their humans to feel love, hope, and positivity towards life.
The speaker also fills the poem with many images because of how many things he runs across. Words like ball, stick, residue, dead thing, and fog allow the reader to imagine the dog constantly chasing after something. He “sniff[s] the wind, then/ [is] off again” (5-6) while the owner is in deep concentration about their life. The poem also uses other types of figures of speech: metaphors, an oxymoron, and personification. The metaphor is in lines twelve through thirteen, “This shining bark,/ a Zen master’s bronzy gong, calls you here”. The dog’s bark is being compared to a large gong that, when hit, can wake up and bring the owner back to reality with precision and ease. The oxymoron is also very canine specific, “…thrillingly dead thing…” (6). Most humans would not find something dead thrilling, but to a dog that is a source of possible food and great, stinky smells. The dog sees it as something new and exciting, even though the object is dead. The poem has the unique quality of personifying the dog because dogs cannot articulate their thoughts and emotions into words or create poetry, though Doty makes his speaker very believable.
Another very unique quality to the poem is that it follows the structure of a Petrarchan sonnet, with a rhyme pattern of abb, then cdd, but then it gets a little crazy. This gives it a unique slant rhyme that is hard to follow, emphasizing that the poem is written by a dog. It also presents a problem- solution, but not by dividing the poem into eight lines and then six, like most traditional sonnets. The problem instead comes in line seven, “Either you’re sunk in the past, half our walk,/ thinking of what you can never bring back, /or else you’re off in some fog…”. The speaker considers themselves the solution, “My work:/ to unsnare time’s warp (and woof!), retrieving,/ my haze- headed friend, you” (10-12).
To further understand the poem, you have to understand the author. Mark Doty wrote “Golden Retrievals” four years after he lost his partner, Wally Roberts, to AIDS. The poem was to show that spring is a season of life that allows a mourner to move on. A dog on the other hand, shows that animals cannot process the idea of tomorrow and only live in the moment. The dog ends up helping the owner remove himself from his depressed mind set by forcing him to also live in the moment and to be okay with letting go of some of the grief. The pun of the poem, “…to unsnare time’s warp (and woof!)…” (11) is to show that life is woven together like fabric and that everything happens for a reason. The speaker as a dog helps the poem steer away from a morbid and dark tone, but also remains serious to recognize the grief the author is experiencing.
Mark Doty uses a dog speaker to contrast the happy-go- lucky views of a canine and his own feelings of loss. He achieves this with his variety of tones, an oxymoron, metaphors, and personification. He cleverly uses the format of a traditional Petrarchan sonnet to portray a unique problem- solution and slant rhyme in his poem. This helps to further portray that the speaker is an unorganized canine in “Golden Retrievals”.
Works Cited
Indie Bound. “Dog Years CD”. Indie Bound. NA: American Booksellers Association, 2008.
Web.
Poetry Foundation. “Mark Doty (1953-)”. Poetry Foundation. NA: Poetry Foundation, 2010.
Web.
Sellers, Danielle Lea. “Sex and Reincarnation in Doty’s Golden Retrievals”. Explicator.
Philadelphia: Heldref Publications, 2007. 61-63. Print.
Wunderlich, Mark. “About Mark Doty”. Ploughshares. NA: Ploughshares, 1999. 183-188. Print
