Bender

Gave away my first copy as a gift so just repurchased it. I had stumbled across "Ash Ode" somewhere and was immediately impressed by Young's imagery and the way each line of writing is both individually interesting and also meaningful to the work as a whole. For me, his style avoids the need for a "moment of smug clarity" and makes the reading of a collection of poems all the more enjoyable.

Bought this book form a recommendation in Tony Hoagland's latest book, "Twenty Poems That Could Save America and Other Essays." If your muse is running low on petrol, this book is a gas tank of jet fuel.

October 24, 2015Dean Young has been yoked with John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch and Frank O’Hara. After reading his Bender: New and Selected Poems, I would say that he’s much more readable (or “communicative,” “accessible,” or “meaningful, “ to use other terms we’ve somehow come to suspect) than Ashbery, and not as much fun as Koch, possibly because of his ever-present focus on entropy and death. I’m not sure I would associate him with O’Hara at all. I would here and there also invoke Albert Goldbarth, although Goldbarth is more expansive and shares none of Young’s negativity. On more than one occasion reading Young I recalled Elizabeth Bishop’s signature “awful but cheerful.”What carries you through in so many of Young’s poems, in spite of a repetitive grimness, is his startling inventiveness and originality and his fresh and energetic language, which is fully his own and needs to be compared to no one else’s.The new and selected poems are intermixed, in alphabetical order by title, for the first time I know of in any such collection. As a final nose-thumbing to convention, in lieu of an index of first lines there is a “findex” of last lines, including the memorable last line of ”I See A Lily OnThy Brow.”Here’s that one:It is 1816 and you gash your hand unloadinga crate of geese, but if you keep workingyou’ll be able to buy a bucket of beerwith your potatoes. You’re probably 14 althoughno one knows for sure and the whore you sometimessleep with could be your younger sisterand when your hand throbs to twice its sizeturning the fingernails green, she knotsa poultice of mustard and turkey greasebut the next morning, you wake to a yellowworld and stumble through the London streetsuntil your head implodes like suffocatedfire stuffing your nose with rancid smoke.Somehow you’re removed to Guy’s Infirmary.'It’s Tuesday. The surgeon will demonstrate'on Wednesday and you’re the demonstration.Five guzzles of brandy then they hoist youinto the theater, into the trapped droneand humid scuffle, the throng of studentsa single body staked with a thousand peeringbulbs and the doctor begins to saw. Of courseyou’ll die in a week, suppurating on a camphor-soaked sheet, but now you scream and scream,plash in a red river, in sulfuric steambut above you, the assistant holding you downtrying to fix you with sad, electric eyes'is John Keats.In another poem, “Rubber Typewriter,” Young comes up with this:Maybe you will sit on the tablewhile the doctor says your heart is regurgitating, on the wallscertificates of learning to talk like that.'

Dean Young's just found a slot on the short list of my favorite contemporary poets. Spattered words become visceral experiences. Thrilling. Pick up this book. It'll make you excited about poetry again.

Dean Young at his startling best! A wonderful selection of early to later poems and a few new ones. Dean Young is a marvelous poet!

Dean Young: I love your poetry so much I love YOU. Come live with me and be my. . .Oh, never mind.

i love Dean Young and I love everything he does. when i first saw this book my first thought was "which poems are the new ones" because i have all his other books and have read everything else already. i get that it's very common with poetry books these days to periodically release a "new and collected (or selected)" book but most authors put the collected stuff together and the 'new' stuff together for the people who just want the 'new.' this book on the other hand puts everything together and arranges them alphabetically which i personally find super annoying. so the other night i went through all my dean young books and marked the ones from Bender that appeared in those books leaving only the 'new' ones and made up a list of poems that are 'new.' i also hadn't realized that Dean has 4 different poems all titled just "Flamenco." anyhow, i think i got all the new ones but i may have missed one or two (i don't have Ready-Made Bouquet so not sure) but here's my list. these are the page numbers for the new poems (AFAIK): 4, 6, 11, 16, 17, 26, 40, 48, 70, 89, 94, 95, 96, 97, 99, 102, 111, 112, 130, 132, 141, 142, 150, 151, 157, 158, 170, 181, 185, 191, 197, 212, 213, 230, 239, 254, 269, 271. so if you're like me and want to jump strait to the new ones, there you go. i also find it really funny that Dean has a poem titled "Bender" but that poem did not make the book Bender. nicely done :) now it's time to put together a book of just "Odes" ... till next time.