Dean Young is one of the premier surrealist poets writing today. In Skid, his fifth book of poems, social outrage vies with comic excess. He embraces the autobiographical urge with fury and musically lush exclamations. Whether through the dark facts of mortality or the celebratory surprises of the imagination, these poems proclaim vitality and alertness, wasting nothing. From Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner's "Meep! Meep!" to remembrances of lost loves and laments about the future, Young's poems reveal his faith in the genius of calamity and the redemptive power of fun.

"Anyone with a heartbeat knows that Dean Young has become a crucial nucleotide in the DNA of American poetry. Who else can bridge the gap between the camps of the experimental and the humanist, jolting both awake in just the right way? Deeply, authentically committed to the surrealist tradition of poem-as-event, also fluent in the lingus Americano (French fries and beer), Young's poems improvise, remember, and discover with an abandon which is furious, mind-boggling, funny, and heartbreaking. So often this poet seems to be holding life in his hands like a gorgeous slithery fabric, exclaiming over its astonishing texture and color, as well as its exorbitant price." Tony Hoagland

Sunflower 3
Bright Window 5
I Am But a Traveler in This Land 7
Torn Red Interior 10
My People 12
Howl Upone Eskaping... 14
Gaga Gala 16
Blue Garden 18
Side Effects 20
Dead Dean 22
Sources of the Delaware 24
Today's Visibility 27
We Through Mists Descry 29
Snowy Prairie Rabbit 31
Bright Head 33
This Living Hand 35
Chest Pains of the Romantic Poets 37
Whale Watch 38
Shamanism 101 42
Honeycomb 44
Lives of the Mind 46
Flight Pattern 48
Goodbye, Place I Lived Nearly 23 Years... 50
Hammer 52
Changing Your Bulb 54
Republican Victory 56
The River Merchant, Stuck in Kalamazoo ... 58
Roller Coaster 59
Saga of Stumps 60
All the King's Men 63
Lives of the Noncombatants 64
I See a Lily on Thy Brow 66
Lives of the Dead 68
Sleep Cycle 70
Troy, Indiana 71
And You Don't Even Have to Leave the Building 74
Action Figuring 76
My Fall Teaching Schedule 78
Even Funnler Looking Now 80
A Poem by Dean Young 83
I Can Hardly Be Considered a Reliable Witness 84
Not in Any Ha Ha Way 86
Cotton in a Pill Bottle 88
Bidos 89
Pulse 91
What a Good Horse I Have 93
Archon 95
Noncompliant 97
How I Get My Ideas 99
Acknowledgements 101