Dean Young's Magical Mock-Ode

Upon reading Dean Young, the presence of tradition immediately presents itself, the use of standard form to structure verse. Yet, in an elliptical way, Young's utilization lets his painting of modern existence in all crazy, incoherency ring out. In The Elliptical Poets, Stephen Burt states, "elliptical poets treat literary history with an irreverent involvement. They create inversions, homages, takeoffs on old...poems: they also also adapt old subgenres...elegy...especially ode. (p. 48)" This quote leads us towards a greater understanding of Young's work. Young "inverts" the archaic world of the ode to incorporate the non-linearity and craziness inherent in today's search for meaning. For instance in the aptly titled, "Ash Ode" Young uses traditional language to portray ridiculous events.

Since I've /

Been incinerated, I've oft returned to this though,

that all things loved are pursued and never caught,

even as you slept beside me you were flying off.

Here the apparent description of incineration is juxtaposed with assonance and rhyme scheme, in "oft,"' "caught" "off," which are then disrupted by the words, "flying off."

While "Ash Ode" blatantly refers to its tradition irreverence, poems such as "Centrifuge" employ different characteristics of tradition to the same affect, here, using clear quatrain stanzas.

mistaken for clerks with gum on our shoes. I'm

trying not to panic. I'm trying to find the center,

drive a nail through it like a mercy killing.

Here, the structure of the "classic" might actually find itself at the center of a "mercy killing," in a meta-poetic sense. Does Young's "irreverent" disruption of tradition not send tremors through exhausted quatrains? The description of gum, first person pseudo-confessionalism, and simile of driving nails through, a seemingly lost center, break the mold of tradition by their content alone, yet when placed inside such a regimented structure, their significance multiplies.

Yet Young's work does not seem as bent on destruction of tradition as other contemporary poets, such as Richard Greenfield. Where Greenfield's work takes some ideas of antiquity and drowns them in chaotic mire, albeit with beautiful success, Young's approach resembles more of a "inversion," to take a word from Burt's vocabulary. Young's placement of the magical within the constricting lens of tradition makes his view of the world jump out against its entrapment in a meaningful, powerful way.