Bender: New and Selected Poems

by Dean Young

Overview

"Young's Bender is a book of survival and strength, of seeing even in the smallest things the heights of what we can be. That's as good a definition of contemporary poetry as any."—NPR

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

"The reader's mind shoots through [Young's poems] like the steel ball in a pinball machine, dinging around, racking up points. Dean's poems are amazingly fun."—BOMB

Bender gathers the abundant treasure from Dean Young's twelve volumes. Strongly influenced by Surrealism, Young's poems flash with extravagant imagery, humorous speech, sly views of the quotidian, mercurial hip-shake shifts, and exposed nerves of heartache.

From "Commencement Address":

I love you for shattering.
Someone has to. Just as someone
has to announce inadvertently
the end of grief or spring's
splurge even as the bureaucrat's
spittoon overflows. Someone has to come out
the other end of the labyrinth
saying, What's the big deal?
Someone has to spend all day staring
at the data from outer space
or separating the receipts
or changing the sheets in sour room after room.
I like it when the end of the toilet paper
is folded into a point.
I like napkins folded into swans
because I like wiping my mouth on swans…

Dean Young has published twelve books of poetry, including finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and Griffin Award. He teaches at the University of Texas and lives in Austin.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781556594007
Publisher:	Copper Canyon Press
Publication date:	06/23/2015
Pages:	300
Sales rank:	685,818
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

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

The Afterlife 3

Afterward (Little Evening Sermon) 4

Alternating Current 5

Anti-Ambition Ode 6

Articles of Faith 7

Arts of Camouflage 9

A Student in a Distant Land 11

Bay Arena 12

A Beginner's Guide to Endings 16

Bell Tower 17

Beloved Infidel 19

Bird Sanctuary 21

Bivouacked & Garrisoned Capitol 23

Bolinas, California 25

The Brutal Filament Inside Aglow 26

The Business of Love Is Cruelty 27

Casting Off 29

Changing Genres 30

Changing Your Bulb 31

Charm School 33

Chest Pains of the Romantic Poets 35

Clam Ode 36

Cloud Shadow on Water 38

Commencement Address 39

The Commendation 40

Cotton in a Pill Bottle 41

Deadline 42

Dear Friend 44

Dear Reader 46

Delphiniums in a Window Box 47

Discharged into Clouds 48

Dog Toy 49

Drama in Last Acts 52

Drunker Etc. 54

Easily Bruised 55

Easy as Falling Down Stairs 57

Eidos 58

Elegy on Toy Piano 59

Errata 61

Even Funnier Looking Now 63

An Excitement of Windows 66

Exit Exam 68

Exit Ovidian 70

Facet 71

Fate 72

Fire Is Speaking 73

The First Time & C the Time before That 75

First You Must 78

Flamenco 80

Flood Plain 81

Frottage 82

Gaga Gala 84

Ghost Gust 86

Glider 87

Grand Attempt 89

Gruss 90

Halfstory Halflife 91

Hammer 92

Handy Guide 94

Happy Hour 95

Harvest 96

Hello Old Friend 97

Hold On 98

How Grasp Green 99

How I Get My Ideas 100

How to Be a Surrealist 102

Human Lot 103

The Infirmament 105

The Invention of Heaven 106

Inverness Grey 107

I Said Yes I Meant No 109

See a Lily on Thy Brow 111

Lace 112

Last Words 113

Learn by Doing 115

Lives of the Olympians 117

Lives of the Poets 119

Lives of the Robots 122

Loose-Strife 124

Lucifer 125

Luciferin 127

May Deaths 129

More Anecdotal Evidence 130

Mortal Ode 132

My People 134

Myth Mix 136

My Work among the Insects 139

The New Optimism 141

The New Savagery 142

No Forgiveness Ode 143

Note Enclosed with My Old Jean Jacket 144

Ode to Hangover 148

Off the Hook Ode 150

The Old Enthusiasms 151

On Being Asked by a Student if He Should Ask Out Some Girl 153

One Story 155

Oracle 157

Original Monkey 158

Our Kind of People 160

Out in the Sapphic Traffic 162

The Oversight Committee 163

Phantom Pains 165

Pleasure 167

Poem with a Stone in It 170

Procession 171

Pweth 173

Ready-Made Bouquet 175

Red Glove Thrown in Rosebush 178

Resignation Letter 179

Restoration Ode 181

Revolutions Tend toward Orthodoxy 183

The Rhythms Pronounce Themselves Then Vanish 185

The River Merchant, Stuck in Kalamazoo, Writes His Wife a Letter during Her Semester Abroad 186

Robert Desnos (1900-1945) 187

Rothko's Yellow 189

Rubber Typewriter 191

Rushing through the Night 194

Scarecrow on Fire 195

Scherzo 196

Scribblers Everywhere 197

Selected Recent and New Errors 199

Sex with Strangers 201

Side Effects 203

So the Grasses Grow 205

The Soul 207

Sources of the Delaware 209

Speech Therapy 212

Springtime for Snowman 213

Static City 214

Storms 216

Sunflower 218

Teetering Lullaby 220

Thing Is 221

Three Weeks Late 223

Thrown as if Fierce and Wild 225

Today's Visibility 226

Tongue Doctor 228

To Those of You Alive in the Future 230

Trace Elements 232

Tribe 234

The Unattainable 236

Undertow 238

Unstable Particles 239

Upon Hearing of My Friend's Marriage Breaking Up, I Envision Attack from Outer Space 241

Vacationland 243

The Velvet Underground 245

Vermeer 247

Warbler 248

Whale Watch 250

What Form after Death 254

Where I Left Off 256

While You Were at the Doctor's 257

Whoz Side U On, Anyway? 259

Wind Off a River 261

Winged Purposes 262

With Hidden Noise 264

Wolf speak 266

Yawn 268

You Could Always Teach 269

Zero Hour 271

Findex 272

About the Author 277

Editorial Reviews

After 10 books over 20-odd years, Young (Fall Higher) has become one of our most imitated poets: his jocular jumps from topic to topic, debts to Surrealist dream-logic, mixture of postmodern oddity, stand-up comedy and weighty pathos land his work somewhere between John Ashbery (to whom Young owes much) and Billy Collins (whose affability Young shares). This big first retrospective establishes Young’s limits along with his strengths: poems that accrete one-liners for comic wisdom (“How goofy and horrible is life”) sit beside extended anecdotes in older modes, like “Three Weeks Late” (about a potential pregnancy). Young received a heart transplant in 2011, and it’s easy to spot his mortality: “Here is a semitransparent pebble I picked up/ on the way to my EKG.” Young reprints poems in alphabetical order by title, making it impossible for readers to know which are old or new, as if he meant to disguise any development. The poems can go anywhere, from anywhere, almost too easily—detractors find it hard to tell them apart: “What about Beethoven’s/ deafness, cunnilingus, what is the best way/ to cook fish?” Random comedy rules; yet sadness is never far off—even his weirdest lines can pivot to sum up the human condition. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly