Synopses & Reviews
"Dean Young is a high-energy poet. . . . His vigorous, vibrant, fast-paced poems make startling connections."Judges' citation, Griffin Poetry Prize shortlist
"Anyone with a heartbeat knows that Dean Young has become a crucial nucleotide in the DNA of American poetry."Tony Hoagland
"The language, the invention, the imagination, and the sheer fun of his poems are astounding."Charles Simic
Dean Young surmounts the failures of love and the body with his signature humor, verbal banter, and wild imaginative leaps. Embracing the elegiac, angry, and amorous with surrealistic wordplay and off-kilter music, Young coaxes us to "fall higher" into an intimate, vulnerable, expansive exchange. This is a major new book by one of America's most inventive poets.
I was satisfied with haiku until I met you,
jar of octopus, cuckoo's cry, 5-7-5,
but now I want a Russian novel,
a 50 page description of you sleeping,
another 75 of what you think staring out
a window. I don't care about the plot
although I suppose there will have to be one,
the usual separation of the lovers, turbulent
seas, danger of de-commission in spite
of constant war, time in gulps and glitches
passing, squibs of threnody, a fallen nest,
speckled eggs somehow uncrushed, the sled
out-racing the wolves on the steppes, the huge
glittering ball where all that matters
is a kiss at the end of a dark hall . . .
Dean Young has published ten books of poetry, including finalists for the Pulitzer and Griffin Poetry Prizes. He teaches at the University of Texas, Austin.
Synopsis
Dean Young's poems are as entertaining and imaginative as a three-ring circus painted by Hieronymous Bosch
Synopsis
In Child Made of Sand, Kingsley Tufts-winner Thomas Lux demonstrates a restless energy to explore new territory while confirming his place in the pantheon of contemporary American poetry.
Synopsis
Readers familiar with Thomas Luxs quick-witted images ("Language without simile is like a lung/ without air") and his rambunctious, Cirque-Du-Soleil-like imagination ("The Under-Appreciated Pontooniers") will find in his new collection, Child Made of Sand, not only the signature funny, provocative, and poignant super-surrealism that has made him, along with Charles Simic, James Tate, and Dean Young, one of Americas most inventive and humane poets, but they will also find in a surprising series of homages, elegies, rants, and autobiographical poems a new register of language in which time and mortality echo and reverberate in quieter notes. In "West Shining Tree," we can hear this shift in register when he asks: "Ill head dead West and ask of all I see:/ Which is the way, the long or the short way,/ to the West Shining Tree?"
Synopsis
Love, sex, pain, compassion, mortality—the great subjects of art and life—are treated in fresh and immediate ways by the award-winning Michael Ryan in This Morning. Pulling from the ancient powers of story and song, this masterful poet delivers a collection that is at times dark, funny, and absurd, but poignant and uncompromising the whole way through.
Synopsis
“Unlike too many poets who tumble into print at the first twitch of feeling, Michael Ryan takes time to listen to himself, and such listening contributes immeasurably to the subtlety of his address to the reader . . . [He] reminds us on every page that poems can be about lives, and about them in ways most urgent and delicate.” —William H. Pritchard,
The Nation“The twin ancient powers of poetry are story and song,” Michael Ryan said in a recent interview. “I like a lot of both.” And both are here in This Morning in glorious abundance: graceful complex narratives and tight formal lyrics, edgy humor, affecting music, and insistent clarity always in the service of the heart. He can be deeply funny and extremely moving, often at the same time. No other living poet possesses Ryans range of tone and technique in rendering the great subjects of art and life: sex, mortality, loss, and love (both conjugal and paternal). Even his most apparently autobiographical writing penetrates to the universal subject within it. Like Dickinson in her poetry, his personal life interests him primarily as an instance of human life. His artistic discipline is thus a spiritual discipline, and the vital spirit infusing these poems rises from the depths of isolation transformed by the joy of loving other people persistently and generously. This Morning is the work of a contemporary American master.
About the Author
Dean Young: Dean Young has published ten books of poetry, including finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and Griffin Award. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA, as well as an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is the William Livingston Chair of Poetry at the University of Texas.
Table of Contents
I
The Moths Who Come in the Night to Drink Our Tears 3
The Little Three-Handed Engine That Could 4
The Chairman of Naught 6
You and Your Ilk 7
The Drunken Forest 8
The Underappreciated Pontooniers 9
Nietzsche Throws His Arms Around the Neck of a Dray Horse 10
Scriptus Interruptus 11
A Frozen Ball of Rattlesnakes 12
The Queen of Truth 13
A Delivery of Dung 14
II
Elegy 19
Since Death and Its Sequelae 20
Every Time Someone Masturbates God Kills a Kitten 22
West Shining Tree 23
From Whom All Blessings Flow 24
The Probabilist 26
Rue de la Vieille Lanterne 27
Like Tiny Baby Jesus, in Velour Pants, Sliding down
Your Throat (A Belgian Euphemism) 28
Not the Same Kind of Mud as in “Two Tramps in Mud Time” 30
Ermine Noose 31
Why 32
III
Madsong 35
The Riverine Farmers 36
The Anti-Lunarian League 38
Penultimatum 39
Boy Born with Small Knife in His Head 40
Graves Rented by the Hour 41
Dendrochronologist Blues 42
The Goldfish Room (Where the Cops
Beat You in the Head with a Phonebook) 44
The River of Nuts 46
Baby Madsong 48
IV
Hatrack 51
Fishing 52
Soup Teachers, 54
The Hunchback Farmhand 55
Ladys Slipper 56
Bricks Sinking in Deep Water 57
Dead Horse 58
Fox 60
A Walk in the Woods with Shotguns 62
Outline for My Memoir 64