Life is full of ups and downs. Things may go well for a time, then something or someone interferes, and we wonder if things will ever be right again. There are the blips of life when we are younger, the “sinkhole” as we age, and the inevitable wanderings of a certain dog who only likes to use the left sneaker for his business – not just once but repeatedly. “Dog is mistaken for goD/Failure is an art/Recovery takes great skill.” Makes a person wonder, is there a point? Raw thoughts on life and all it means as “the dog ran swiftly down the street/ looking.”

Michael Pedretti’s chapbook, The Dog and I: Twenty-seven Poems, is a collection of life poems, all abstract and free verse, ranging in topics from the poet’s life from the age of three to seventy-three. The themes focus on life events and how, all through life, we dodge the pitfalls; sometimes we recover, sometimes we don’t. The dog poems, interspersed among the other life poems, follow a trend of growing up, maturing, seeing life differently, dealing with different issues while adding a little metaphoric humor to the more serious nature of the other poems. But there’s also a hidden agenda, an unseen depth to the dog poems as well. This collection of poems is a compelling read, one that will take many reads to appreciate their depth of expression fully. And, in the end, “you might think/ the dog would have found/ a new paradigm/ fresh method of doing business/after all we have progressed.” Of course, sometimes we are all mere creatures of habit, and life is as simple as the title suggests: The Dog and I.

The Dog and I: Twenty-seven Poems is a collection of poetry suitable for the general reading audience and was penned by author Michael Pedretti. The poetry collected in this anthology covers a variety of themes using a minimalist style of writing. Some of the themes explored by the poems include warfare, homelessness, the relentless pace of life, and the author’s relationship with his dog. Whilst the themes tackled are large and heavy in nature, the poet is sure to include the occasional humorous moment.

The reflections in this collection of poems are fascinating and thought-provoking examinations of some areas of life that occupy a lot of our minds. Feelings about the pace at which we’re forced to live our lives, stopping us from fully experiencing the wonder of them, are something I suspect most of us have had over the years. The presumptions about homeless people offer another universal theme that is touched on with great success as Michael Pedretti’s minimalist imagery allows us to fill in the blanks in the poem with our own experiences. Where I found myself most interested though was in the poems about Vietnam as these were centered around the experiences of the poet’s brother during the conflict there. These are less universal and relatable for the average reader, but The Dog and I’s signature style left me contemplating the bigger issues at play as I read those poems. This is a short collection compared to others in this style, but it left me hungry for more work by the poet.