It's Been a Fine Year by Spencer Folkins

A new chapbook from Anstruther Press

When it comes to reviewing poetry, I make no pretense as to appear to know what I’m talking about. I am not a Michael Greenstein (or any of the fine poetry reviewers here at TSR) and I never will be, but I appreciate poetry like I appreciate art and music, if it moves me in some way, I like it. There is so much good poetry out there (however one defines “good”) and I wish I had a deeper appreciation of just how poetry “works”, but like any complicated thing, I am satisfied that it does work, so I can use/enjoy it as intended.

This brings us to this new chapbook from Anstruther Press, It’s Been a Fine Year by Spencer Folkins. His bio states that he is “thinking of writing a poem on a lost dog’s collar.” “Ode to a lost dog’s collar” would be a fitting title for a poem in this collection, for this chapbook centres around the poet's dog. I am comfortable discussing dogs, as my wife and I have owned three over the thirty-eight years of our marriage. However, I am more of a cat person (we have owned several of them) and I’m sure there’s a poetry collection out there all about the secret life of cats. I must search for such a thing!

Back to the chapbook.

In the request for a review email I received, it states: “It’s Been a Fine Year explores the poet’s immediate relationships—including reflections on mortality and isolation—before, during, and after the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns. The poet’s senior dog is often used as an entry point to these conversations with the reader.”

Ah, Covid lockdowns and senior dogs: now we are entering familiar areas. Our two previous dogs were both “seniors” at the time of their being euthanized (a traumatic experience for all), and as a frontline healthcare worker, I was on the job throughout the lockdowns. Let’s now explore some selected poems.

The chapbook comes out strong in the imagery department with “Part of what remains” in which we find the poet walking his dog “on this gritty stretch of backroad” where the downed sign of a realtor is slowly emerging from “spring’s mix of sand and snow” a time of year we are all familiar with. A greyish-brown time of year, totally lacking in anything green at the moment. Focusing now on the dog’s interaction with the fallen sign:

“out walking – her long-retired fervent hunting snort
greets every roadside anthill, increasing
with activity each day in anticipation of her return

and with it, the guaranteed release
marking her scent, haunches pulsating rhythmic
as quivering gargoyles.”

One can picture the dog’s snort annoying the anthill community, then the ultimate insult, the release of her marking scent, which, guaranteed, the ants will need to rebuild after. Life interacting with life as the human oversees it all, walking a dog causes one to reflect on these little interactions that will happen a hundredfold over the life of the dog: same stretch of road in all seasons, the snorts, the urination, and defecations go on daily, perhaps more often.

“About the Deafness of the Dog” (note the capitalizations of the “D” words, as if to strike the seriousness of the subject, an-oft discussed one, no doubt) strikes home as Ginger, our miniature Dachshund went deaf in her senior years.

“The dog laments
alone sometimes
in the hollow house”

The dog is watching the front door for the return of her humans, but they enter, unheard through the back door, much to the annoyance of the dog when she sees a light come on, which sets her howling “to tell how she despises” her unexplainable loss of this most important sense.

“She wants us to hear her because she can’t
and how else to communicate?”

Ginger would typically sleep on her small dog bed and our entrances would go unheard, and we would have to gently wake her (by touch) to not startle her out of her sleep. Then she would greet us as she would have when she had her hearing: with a wagging tail and a wiggly body. Truly, a sad time for the humans, and an inexplicable one for the dog.

In “It’s been a fine year; I think I, too, will prepare for hibernation” we once again find the poet out walking his dog and the anthills are busy with activity, the dog “insists” at stopping at them. “Why?” the poet wonders. “Pheromones” is all he can think of. The ants, meanwhile, are preparing for winter’s hibernation, taking “each morsel (of nearby roadkills) to their queen” and the poet now ponders the weather, how it was a “bad summer for gardens [but] a good one for patios.” For the ant, for the dog, life goes on despite any type of weather. Food must be gathered, walks must be taken, and the poet laments “I used to write to make sense of things”, but in the days of Covid-19, there was a paucity of sense to be had from a human perspective.

“Guests, Sleeping” reads like a microscopic horror: the dog, upon waking, is on the scent of blood that is emanating from a pool of the ‘sleeping guest’ in the basement. Enough said.

I’ll conclude by looking at one more poem, “Afterthoughts” which occurs “after dinner” when the poet and his partner, along with the dog of course, abandon the dinner table to sit quietly in the glow of candles:

“Our devices could be abandoned, maybe
we stop letting so much of the world in.

Tonight we can reflect our own indifference
back on it. Our old dog will be confused at first
but not opposed. Just aimless.

She’ll join because we match her quiet
disposition during this time.
And maybe we’ll wake up here, aimless
trying to be fine with it, with us

and all of it.”

Such great phrasing, it almost could be a song sung by David Gilmour, of Pink Floyd fame, in his distinctive slightly hoarse British voice. This poem contains a lot of maybe’s, reflecting the uncertainty, the newness of uncertainties in the days of Covid-19.

When we had the freedom of coming and going as we pleased, we could only dream of being home; now with lockdowns, we feel confined, restricted, even in the comfort of our homes, on a candlelit evening with the dog at our feet. The dog, of course, senses the uncertainty and is disquieted until the calm of its humans match her quiet.

The days of Covid-19 lockdowns were quiet indeed, and looking back, we forget how restricted we were, how uncertain the world was about this disease, where it came from, how it reached our shores, who would succumb to it. Thankfully, for pet owners (and for the unknowing pet), we had each other and that had to be enough.

In his acknowledgements, Spencer Folkins thanks “Chrissy, the very best dog” for “accompanying me on the walks which served as the catalyst for many of these poems and were instructive in setting their pace.” Chapbooks are wonderful little worlds in just a few pages and are an instrumental way for a budding/striving poet to get published. Thanks go to Mr. Folkins (and Chrissy!) for helping us to make a little more sense of our world and reminding us that domestic animals such as dogs and cats can make for good company in these unsettled times.

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Book Details

• Chapbook, published by Anstruther Press (2025)

• 50 Copies

• ISBN 978-1-998774-78-7