Grappling with Dean Young

When talking of Dean Young his use of the surreal in combination with the traditional breaks his poetry forth, as if its wild nature is trying to break free of containment and succeeding. Thus Young's poetry flows out in a style that shows the non-linearity of life, and the illogical existence we find ourselves in. As in the way the surrealists saw the horrors of World War I and the inability for old methods of art to produce meaning, Young seeks to show the inability of narrative and tradition to convey "reason."

In this way, reviewers such as David Sewell, see that the resulting, "idiosyncratic babel is not trash." Yet Sewell does help to point out where Young, "entrusts the not serious or not really interesting with a seriousness/prominence/presence it doesn't really deserve." Thus poems such as, "Ode to Hangover" might very well fall into this category. While the poem accurately portrays the inability of an ode to capture modern day existence, it focuses on the elation of the mundane with questioning importance, "After her I could eat a car but here's/a pineapple/clam pizza and Chinese milkshake/ yum but Hangover, you make me aspire/ to a saltine." As if the humor and importance of such an act of defying traditional poetics grows weary with every line.

Yet Sewell does well to point out the imagination and riskiness of Young's work, "Lives of the Surge Protectors" emerges for me as beautiful obliteration, flying through an ambiguity of narration, plot, grammar that ends in the beauty of the new. In fact to quote it does away with its ravenous pace and fluidity, regardless I present its first "sentence."

When she said what she said I

get out change the locks get

drunk fucked out detach drum

whocome howwhich no so I go

program the robot like I always do

in a loud den of panged sentinels

highlit and lifting off the page like

little wolves of italics orchestrating

the ephemeral, eflorescent As if

with blutzed butanes and all you hear

is snow, false as only facts can be.

Young presents an incredibly innovative and albeit beautiful description of anger, as if the words themselves lose their ability to grapple with their content, "drunk fucked" "whocome" "howwhich," ending with the powerful line, "false as only facts can be." Indeed nothing is factual in Young's work. It is the very essence of the surreal, in its attempt to come to terms with the world around it in new more meaningful ways. In this way Sewell's final point finds some commonality, "The poems always seem to be flying away--from easy sense making, from themselves, from us." Their break from tradition explores the heart of its inability and displays the non-linear, non-sensical ways in which existence presents itself.