Shock by Shock

by Dean Young

Overview

"Dean Young challenges the reader to hang on as he jigs from one poetic style to another and sets a wondrous course across a Duchampian landscape."—Chicago Tribune

"In Young's work, the big essential questions—mortality, identity, the meaning of life—aren't simply food for thought; they're grounds for entertainment."—The Sunday Star (Toronto)

Dean Young escorts his transplanted heart into invigorating poetic territory that combines the joy of being alive with his signature mixture of surrealism, humor, and fast-cut imagery. A Pulitzer finalist known for his hard-won insights, NPR said it best when they observed that Young sees "even in the smallest things the heights of what we can be."

From "Harvest":

Bring me the high heart of a trapezist.
If not, bring me the heart of a drunk monk
so I may illuminate an ancient text
in a language I can't understand.
The brain too is blood, blood racing
100 miles an hour on training wheels
so let me splash through a red puddle,
let me kiss the face of a red puddle,
let me write my crazed, extreme demands
on the frost-cracked window of god's split
chest…

Dean Young is the author of 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:	9781619321472
Publisher:	Copper Canyon Press
Publication date:	08/22/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	120
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Dean Young: Dean Young has published eleven 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

Could Have Danced All Night 3

Unlikely Materials 4

Street of Blind Knife Throwers 5

Crash-Test Dummies of an Imperfect God 7

Romanticism 101 8

The Death of André Breton 9

Heavy Lifting 10

Not Trying to Win No Prize 11

Glorious Particles in the Atmosphere Aflame 12

The Usual 13

How I Got Through. My Last Day on the Transplant List 14

Eternally the Sky Calls to Us 15

The Late Work of Pinkham Ryder 16

Three-Hearted Poem 17

Success Story 18

Another Original Monkey 20

Caruso on Pluto 23

Bird-Shaped Cliff 25

Crow Hop 26

Raft Hidden in Weeds 27

Blue Mansion 28

Eternal Is Our Journey, Brief Our Stopover 30

Exit Strategies 31

A Banner Day in the Boonies 32

Rites of Spring 33

Sky Below 34

Flash Powder 35

A Student Comes to My Office 37

Light-Bringers 38

Why I Haven't "Outgrown Surrealism" No Matter What That Moron Reviewer Wrote 39

Another Lethal Party Favor 40

Speech Therapy 41

Surgery in Air 42

Underground River 43

Grasshopper in a Field Being Mowed 44

Oracle 45

Everyday Escapees 46

Singing Underwater 47

Bender 51

How to Draw a Circle 57

Tomaz, I'm Still among the Living 58

Missing Person 59

My Wolf Is Bigger Than Your Wolf 60

Edgework 61

Quiet Grass, Green Stone 62

Emerald Spider between Rose Thorns 63

How to Glow 64

Gizzard Song 66

Folklore 68

Rough Drafts 70

The Life of the Mind 71

Ghost Gust 72

If You Can't Levitate, You'd Better Know How to Disappear 73

Watcher of the Skies 74

This Is the Other Road 76

Believe in Magic? 77

Acknowledgments 79

About the Author 81

Editorial Reviews

08/17/2015
In his first collection of all-new work written after his 2011 heart transplant, Young (Bender) appears at his most mordant, and most mortal. “The wolf appointed to tear me apart/ is sure making slow work of it,” he writes to open the book, and in the poems that follow, Young retains his considerable charms: a generous, tragicomic spirit, a guileless love of rhyme, and an acrobatic sense of logic and image. In “Crash Test Dummies of an Imperfect God,” the eponymous subjects rapidly transform from “dumpster” to “snow cone” to “genital-faced bivalve.” But these poems, which invite readers into the quotidian aspects of the poet’s life and reflect on his career, are also unusually meditative for Young, who is better known for pyrotechnics. “I’m ready for my close-up./ I’m ready for my far-away,” he writes in “Ghost Gust,” one of several poems that figure his post-op survival as a kind of afterlife. Not all of the poems hit their mark (indeed, one likens poets to “blind knife throwers”), and the collection hardly represents a major stylistic shift, but its twilit tenor does give it an extra heft. Even with a borrowed heart, Young has a remarkable capacity to remind us of the ticking of our own. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

07/01/2015
As indicated by the poem "How I Got Through My Last Days on the Transplant List," Young, a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Elegy on Toy Piano, isn't dealing with everyday upsets. With his new heart in place, he offers a sometimes blackly witty look at the human condition. Absolutely not sentimental, Young can sound angry or restless, though it's less with his situation than with our suddenly highlighted stupidities ("No one believing you is a symptom// of telling the truth"). Refreshingly, he's not here to lecture us with a Hallmark life-is-wonderful message (just read "Crash-Test Dummies of an Imperfect God"). Instead, he clarifies that we often miss the point ("Only page 200 and already Breton's// finding it impossible to reconcile/ life to his dream. If only he could feel/ my old dog drinking from his cupped palms") and that assuming a point could be our big mistake ("If I had to pick between shadows/ and essences, I'd pick shadows"). VERDICT The final poem is titled "Believe in Magic?" and though the initial response is "How could I not?" in the end Young's a burning piece of paper, hanging in air, unreadable. That's where he leaves us in this energizing book, which takes chances and gives no answers.—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Library Journal