In Dean Young’s sprawling and subversive first
book of prose on poetry, imagination swerves into primitivism and surrealism
and finally toward empathy. How can recklessness guide the poet, the artist,
and the reader into art, and how can it excite in us a sort of wild
receptivity, beyond craft? “Poetry is not a discipline,” Young writes. “It is a
hunger, a revolt, a drive, a mash note, a fright, a tantrum, a grief, a hoax, a
debacle, an application, an affect . . .”
PRAISE FOR DEAN YOUNG:
“Dean Young's poems are as
entertaining as a three-ring circus and as imaginative as a canvas by
Hieronymous Bosch. He is one of the most inventive and satisfying poets writing
today.”
