“Dean Young’s work will delight only two kinds of people: those who generally read poetry and those who generally don’t.”
—The Threepenny Review
In this follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize–finalist collection Elegy on Toy Piano, Dean Young—one of the most individual poets of the past several decades, and with one of the most iconic voices in poetry today—once again sets about taking some cracks at the piñata of commonplace reality. No one is unsure if they’ve read a poem by Dean Young. The power and sheer curiosity of the poems in this book leave a mark:
You are in your pajamas / eating cold pizza / when you decide
to make a coyote. / Now all you need is a pregnant coyote.
Darling, if you were here, I’d try / to lick your heart.
What happens when your head splits open / and the bird flies out, its two notes deranged?
All that a human is made of is gold, / very very little gold.
Imagine a frog / in your mouth, struggling. / Now imagine you’re that frog.
Why am I so afraid of nothingness? / My soul is a baby wolf.
Dean Young has published seven previous collections of poetry, most recently Elegy on Toy Piano, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Skid, a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Prize. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and teaches at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
