Forklift, Ohio


31 Poems by Dean YoungIlluminatrix by Alexis OrgeraSecret Damage by Russell DillonFalse Soup by Melissa BarrettLast Ride by Abraham SmithThe Lost Notebooks of Juan Sweeney translated by Chad SweeneyRanges II by Michael SchiavoThe Dark is Here by Kiki PetrosinoTouch Monkey by Stuart DischellThe Dept. of Ephebic Dreamery by Darcie Dennigan I Feel YES by Nick Sturm PATRIOT by Laurie Saurborn Young The Imaginations by Jean-Paul Pecqueur
 

 

Cover image: 31 Poems (1988-2008) - book by Dean Young

31 Poems (1988-2008)

Collected and new works

by Dean Young

72 pages, perfect-bound,
soft cover.

$12 (First Class postage-paid)

 

Of Dean Young’s work,
it has been said:


“Bad by cosmic design…”

—Dan Chiasson
New York Times
Book Review


“trash”

—William Logan
The New Criterion


“I would rather
boil myself alive
than read this man's
‘work’ ever again.”

—Glint Masser
Amazon.com 

Fin-dex

 

The little cart creaks down the street/pulled by a man talking to himself.   73

who rolls a quarter across his knuckles/to get them working again.   26

he’ll explain everything,/he who doesn’t have a clue or far too many.   41

clouds that were HIS idea.   19

who sends them on missions & they always return/dented, immutable, unalloyed.   49

Debussy, when he felt his opera going nowhere,   let it.   55

Now imagine you’re that frog.   22

inherited by a great niece/along with the love letters bound in silk ribbon.   46

The wolf’s mouth is full/of strawberries, the morning’s a phantom/hum of glories.   10

the stem unraveling into flower, into flame,/into seed and wind, into dirt, into into into.   37

The trees our fathers planted we will not see again.   67

Sleep, tomorrow/we’ll go to the sea.   39

Before tackling the nude,/you must work for months with wooden blocks.   69

you’ll have lots to do later/inspiring abstemious philosophies and menial tasks/that too contribute to the beauty of this world.   24

You pick up/a clod to throw on the coffin lid but can’t/so turn away, dropping it in your pocket.   57

I say the final’s on Monday,/mostly short answer, some i.d.   28

each of us/off at a different floor: cardiology,/oncology, psychiatry, the burn unit,/the solarium.   43

In the hallways run a hundred children/in blue capes.   34

the assistant holding you down,/trying to fix you with sad, electric eyes/is John Keats.   65

how many times do you have to die/before you’re dead?   17

Oh unknowable/other, how I loved your smell.   35

how it smells like iron/then it rains and rains and rains.   71

It’s all right, I will say and my cat will cease/mewing beneath the earth.   45

Dearheart, already we’re air.   53

I won’t let the ice/on my face be wasted, won’t mistake/its melting for tears.   61

It will be like sleeping and/you won’t have to worry if you are really loved.   60

About this, even diamonds do not lie.   32

What I know about form couldn’t fill a thimble. What form knows about me will be my end.   30

but keep hammering because/hammering makes the world.   51

At least turn me over so I can see the sky.   63

I was drunk when I got here, I plan/on being drunk when I leave.   13

swearing/there will never be another like me, making sure.   15

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dean Young author photoDean Young has published ten books of poetry, recently Elegy on Toy Piano, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Primitive Mentor. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, two from the National endowment for the Arts as well as an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has taught in the low-residency MFA program at Warren Wilson College and was on the permanent faculty at the Iowa Writers' Workshop until becoming the William Livingston Chair of Poetry at the University of Texas at Austin in 2008. A book on poetics, The Art of Recklessness will be published in 2010.