Skid (Pitt Poetry Series)

Rating:
Summary: unfaltering tangibility
Review: Dean's "First Course in Turbulence" was perhaps the first collection of poetry I have ever enjoyed in entirety. I became a devout follower from the moment my brain first sundered his work; and had the recent privilege to hear Dean read from his new collection, "Skid". With an amazing gift for florid language, Dean still manages to talk about life in a manner that makes his content accessible to a copious amount of readers. What marks "Skid" as unique is perhaps its more personally oriented quality, when compared to previous collections. Dean manages to reveal chunks of his persona along with his commentary on the intricacies of life. Simply said, this is a collection that should adorn your bookshelf.

Rating:
Summary: unfaltering tangibility
Review: Dean's "First Course in Turbulence" was perhaps the first collection of poetry I have ever enjoyed in entirety. I became a devout follower from the moment my brain first sundered his work; and had the recent privilege to hear Dean read from his new collection, "Skid". With an amazing gift for florid language, Dean still manages to talk about life in a manner that makes his content accessible to a copious amount of readers. What marks "Skid" as unique is perhaps its more personally oriented quality, when compared to previous collections. Dean manages to reveal chunks of his persona along with his commentary on the intricacies of life. Simply said, this is a collection that should adorn your bookshelf.

Rating:
Summary: Humorous Comfort
Review: I have taken this off the shelf to read it regularly. Also, though I'm a dire cheapskate who usually reads library copies (of new poetry), I will be buying this. This is a good one to read aloud to whoever's driving the car, to read when one has the flu for a little comfort, to e-mail to people to cheer them up. A good title: "Howl Upone Eskaping, I Learne Mey Vehikle Is Not Sea-Worthie & Upone Mey Tragik Recapture & Longe Internmynt During Whyche I Wrighte These Words Thorough a Secret System Infolfing Mey Owne Blood". An excerpt from that poem: "In the bathroom was a book of poems by (Blank Blank) about how sad and exquisite/and made of goopy lace everything was/ I hated those poems. Even a regular burrito,/no guacamole, was more full of life/than those poems yet each time his school/met mine, they won, walking away...I was just like you until I was alone/then I was a cherry blossom." And in "Whale Watch": Just because a thing can never be finished/doesn't mean it can't be done./The most vibrant forms are emergent forms./In winter, walk across the frozen lake/and listen to it boom and you will know/something of what I mean. It may be necessary to go to Mexico." Reading the entire book, one will see what these brief excerpts don't capture: what nicely accrues after two-four pages of humorous leaps, Zeppo, lobsters and so on, with a human message, always, as the locus.(If you like Caroline Knox, Mary Ruefle (why, she wrote the poem "A Poem by Dean Young"), Tom Andrews, etc., you will enjoy this, I think).

Rating:
Summary: Unwavering, intelligent humor
Review: I love Dean Young. I love Dean Young very much. There are many, many contemporary poets I love, but Young's poetry has, I don't know, more OOMPH (is that the correct spelling? I hope you know what I mean). But this OOMPH, this power is not lacking in the poetry of other contemporary poets, it is just more natural with Dean Young. My copy of Skid is worn to a point of obscenity. I feel so guilty that I have turned something so beautiful into a dog-eared mess, but isn't great art here for consumption?

Poetry readers of all levels (and even those readers with more nichey interests) will thoroughly enjoy Young. The poems in Skid are sometimes tragic in their humor that sometimes bordelines on the inappropriate (but in a good way!), and sometimes the poems are quite simple and engulfed by the heart and musings of a true twentieth-century poet.

Read Dean Young, and I am sure this nonsensical review will begin to make sense.