Dean Young

"Although his work comes out of the poetries of Kenneth Koch, John Ashbery, and Frank O Hara and James Tate, Young has his own original voice. The language, the invention, the imagination, and the sheer fun of his poems is astounding. It s not all dazzle either. The poems are also moving. This man reminds us that there is nothing more serious than a joke." Charles Simic, final judge and author of Jackstraws, Walking the Black Cat, and A Wedding in Hell "In this, the most beautiful of his three collections, Dean Young enlarges the project of North American Surrealism, gifting it with an entirely new intimacy and equally new range. His voice is sharply tender and mercifully unforgetful. These urgent, elegiac improvisations speed us towards millenium." Donald Revell, author of My Mojave, Arcady, and There Are Three

Poems

Strike Anywhere

Sarah Sammis

Strike Anywhere by Dean Young is his third collection of poetry. It's a slim volume, nearly identical in length to Some Ether by Nick Flynn.

Dean Young is an award winning poet. His poems are surrealist. I like surrealism but in smaller doses. Eighty pages of surrealism was more than I could handle.

I managed to read seriously the first twenty pages. After that I resorted to skimming. Perhaps if I'd had the opportunity to read the collection at a slower pace or in a quieter location I would have had a more positive experience. As it was, the disjointed phrases and strange imagery made for a non comprehensible read.

Strike Anywhere Poems

Reviews