The Art of Recklessness: Poetry as Assertive Force and Contradiction

I bought this book based on rave reviews on this site and realized almost immediately that this is a book aimed at writers looking for a preacher man, or guru of sorts. First, the copyeditor or editor should have red-flagged those all-cap gems of wisdom he likes to impart--bad form in any writing as it always makes me feel as though I'm being reprimanded.Second, some of the writing makes no sense to me; indeed, it often sounds as though the author is trying to convince me to buy something I don't need, and I'd better buy it precisely because I don't think I need it.Third, he doesn't want me in his club unless I agree with him. On page 14, he writes (screams) in all caps, which I won't reproduce here: "The highest accomplishment of human consciousness is the imagination and the highest accomplishment of the imagination is empathy and the ability to love...." Well, I didn't get this right away, because there was no comma between the first two clauses, so I had to go back an read it again. And just as I realized what he was trying to say and pondering its validity, he writes: "...and if you don't think that takes a profound part in the creation of the world, please close this book right now."Can you figure this out? I can't. What takes a profound part in the creation of the world? Not sure. So not only does he yell at his readers by all-capping his driving points, he tells us to go away if we don't agree with what he is saying, and too bad if we don't get it right away. So I'm back in middle school?Young will never be accused of clarity of writing. I could go to any page in the book, drop my finger randomly on a sentence, and declare it ambiguous at best, self-gratifying at worst. Here's a little passage in his discussion of a poem by Robert Hass: "It is no wonder that the bringing into awareness of creation as an act, as accomplished by a fallible, self-doubting creature, would lead to this sort of sparagmatic voice. This contradiction of singularity."How can anyone read this and take it seriously? Since there's a comma after "act," I know this "creature" is not the being that/who brought creation as an act into awareness. So who is it? Someone should have gone through the copy with an eye for punctuation and a talent for trimming the fat.I'm sure my disappointment with the book is easily drowned in a sea of hurrahs. I have to admit that I was attracted to the book's claim of being "subversive"--the promise of a unique and rebellious voice, welcome in this time of literary conformity when many poets sound fairly similar to one another. However, there's nothing subversive or non-conforming about the book. For me, it's a wordy journey back to square one. However, for a reader in search of an ambulance driver who prefers to take you on the scenic route to the emergency room, he might be the man for you.

got the book

Please don't waste your money on this dreadful book. I hoped I was getting a lesson in how to take chances in poetry. What I got was an incomprehensible fever dream (to borrow a term from Jack Keroauac unedited "babbleflow") from this author who in 2010 still uses the term "primitive art" to describe the work of pre-industrial ("non-civilized" non-western) peoples. Who is he to judge what is "primitive" or not. I have read (slogged through) 47 pages and still don't know what this Pulitzer Prize winning writer is talking about. The subtitle is Poetry as an Assertive Force and Contradiction. Well if it is contradictory the experience is kind of like being whipsawed in a labyrinth of tangled language. Ugh. Pretentious nonsense doesn't begin to describe this terrible offering. Not worth the time or the outlay of one dime let alone 13.99.

As a writer who needs to be willing to take more chances, I found this book not only useful but a real call to -- well, not a call to arms but a call to pen and paper. I'd read Donald Revell's book in this series (The Art of Attention) and found it to take too abstract an approach to writing -- the sort of approach that leads all too often to vague, "evocative" poems that never make the step into transcendence; Dean Young's approach does not absolve the writer from the need to pay attention -- it just asks the writer to push beyond attentiveness into something more complex. I'm not a big reader of craft books, but this is one I'll be recommending to students and teachers and writers alike.

In the interest of brevity I'll summarize as follows: text on craft is not my favorite reading, but Young has done something special and beautiful here. It's poetry, process, theory, history, psychology, and incitement to act all rolled into a lyrical hunk of prose that's as useful as it is enjoyable to read. I'm a fan of Young's poetry, and this is easily my favorite of the last three of his books I've read. It's dog-eared to all hell and the people in my life are tired of hearing about it.

This is a great book and was a Christmas gift. Unfortunately the person already had the book and because it was so inexpensive, it wasn't worth it to send it back so, he now has two. I ordered something else from Amazon.com which he was also pleased with.

I was deeply effected by many parts of this book. (Although I did find it too wordy and abstract in many places.) I have used what I learned in my own poetry. My often-published mentor told me after reading my new pieces, "You have turned a corner."I've purchased perhaps twenty or thirty Amazon books this year, and this one has had the greatest impact on me.

Young's call to recklessness is one to which we should all respond. As readers of poetry, yes, but as writers, too. His challenge is to remember what an important thing poetry can be, ought to be, deserves to be, in our lives. because with it our lives are greater. As we used to say in the Marvel days, 'Nuff said.

I had hoped to be informed and enlightened. But whatever message is enclosed within this work is buried beneath obfuscation of the worst kind; one adjective, one noun or one adverb will not do if two, three or even six can be used instead; as if the author doesn't really know which is the most appropriate. On the other side of the coin, expect sentences half a page long; and only a single, rambling, incoherent chapter for the whole book.A couple of quotations will give the predominant flavour; "Poetry is a manifestation of the spirit as it triangulates itself through the desires of meat, meditative inklings of immortality, and the play in the manipulation of aestheticised materials" (page 11). "The imagination in this formation is fundamentally erotic as it finds itself in perpetual and ongoing mythos of orgasmic self-reformation through encounter with otherness." (Page 115). If there is any message here, it is perhaps expressed in a single sentence (printed in capitals) on page 5, "Poetry can't be harmed by people trying to write it !" But prose can, apparently...Many people love this book, maybe you will be one of them; I wasn't, and hopefully what I've said will be enough to deflect those who may be of a like mind to myself.