Review

“Young has always stood out for his sharp humor, boundless poetic energy, and sheer readability. If adventurous poetry can sometimes feel like a tenuous tightrope walk, Young's poems feel more like zip lines.”― The Boston Globe

“This book reads like a long, breathless thank-you for life's seemingly random jumble of beauty, strangeness, tenderness and joy.” ― Los Angeles Times

“Young has mastered his own style and way of thinking in poems. Only a rare poet can make a reader simultaneously cry and laugh this way.” ― Publishers Weekly

“Young’s amiable Dadaism kindly and gently shows us the desperation and oblivion visible in good poetry. For all his comedic effects, there’s some serious work being done here. Young’s work withstands and encourages such serious treatment.” ― Boston Review

“Mr. Young knows that to be truly reverent, the poet needs to be irreverent…But for all his humor and linguistic jazz, Mr. Young doesn’t shun the big questions.” ― The New York Times

“The poems always seem to be flying away―from easy sense making, from themselves, from us. It’s almost as if they are birds. And, as birds, most of them soar well above the seed-pecked fields of contemporary poetry.” ― Coldfront

About the Author

Dean Young is the author of seventeen books of poetry and poetic theory. His iconic, comedic style is derived from the New York School of Poetry and from contemporary art movements like Surrealism and Dadaism. In an interview with the University of Arizona Poetry Center, Young said, “For me the human drama, the squishy, time-limited pulse, is always at the center of the poem.” His book Elegy on Toy Piano was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2006, and his work has been celebrated with the Academy Award in Literature and the Colorado Prize for Poetry. Dean Young served as the Texas Poet Laurate and has received multiple fellowships, including the National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship, the Stegner Fellowship, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. He currently holds the position of William Livingston Chair of Poetry at the University of Texas, Austin.

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