Elegy On Toy Piano (Pitt Poetry Series) [Paperback]

Dean Young (Author)

Book Description

Series: Pitt Poetry Series | Publication Date: January 28, 2005

In Elegy on Toy Piano, Dean Young's sixth book of poems, elegiac necessity finds itself next to goofy celebration. Daffy Duck enters the Valley of the Eternals. Faulkner and bell-bottoms cling to beauty's evanescence.

Even in single poems, Young's tone and style vary. No one feeling or idea takes precedence over another, and their simultaneity is frequently revealed; sadness may throw a squirrelly shadow, joy can find itself dressed in mourning black. As in the agitated "Whirlpool Suite": "Pain / and pleasure are two signals carried / over one phoneline."

In taking up subjects as slight as the examination of a signature or a true/false test, and as pressing as the death of friends, Young's poems embrace the duplicity of feeling, the malleability of perception, and the truth telling of wordplay.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Staccato and frantic, created by long series of declarative end-stopped lines, Young's sixth collection confidently balances moments of absurdity against high drama and raw admissions of emotion: "Our camouflage works best/ galloping en masse in discotheques./ We are very gentle with our young." The book is dedicated to the late Kenneth Koch; when Young writes of a power drill telling a canoe, "You don't have a clue," he really means it. The title poem recalls something of Auden's elegy for Yeats, in sentiment if not in tone, and slyly contains self-doubt: "His work has enlarged the world/ but the world is about to stop including him./ He is the tower the world runs out of." When Young's poetry works, his particular mix of the silly and the deadly serious increases the poignancy of the poems, so that in the first poem a long series of unconnected images and references (Marilyn Monroe, a squirrel hanging on a transformer, a third-grader "loose in dishwares") culminates heartrendingly in this question: "Will we never see our dead friends again?" This book of energetic, chronic juxtaposition pieces together a winning, tinkling set of send-offs for friends, and for feelings. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

“Confidently balances moments of absurdity against high drama and raw admissions of emotion. . . . His particular mix of the silly and the deadly serious increases the poignancy of the poems. . . . This book of energetic, chronic juxtaposition pieces together a winning, tinkling set of send-offs for friends, and for feelings.”
--Publishers Weekly

“Surrealism seldom seems as much like real life as in Young’s hilarious and cautionary poems."
--Booklist

“Dean Young’s work, I’ve concluded, will delight only two kinds of people: those who generally read poetry and those who generally don’t. The former will find a promising revitalization project and unalloyed pleasure. The latter will find, to their unalloyed pleasure, that perhaps poetry isn’t how they imagined it. . . . Young is the architect of an amusement park, but he’s also the mescaline-addled raconteur in the truth-teller’s booth at that amusement park. He’s both dreamscaper and landscaper, spinner of fantastic yarns and unremitting bullshit-detector. He’s initiating protests with water guns. He’s composing dirges on plastic accordions and elegies on toy pianos.”
--Threepenny Review

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 90 pages
• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press; 1 edition (January 28, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822958724
• ISBN-13: 978-0822958727
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.3 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #70,593 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The mysteries of life, death, and everything in between, May 13, 2005

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Elegy On Toy Piano (Pitt Poetry Series) (Paperback)

Elegy On Toy Piano is the sixth collection of poetry from Lenore Marshall Prize finalist Dean Young. The brief, free-verse wordplay mourns the tragedies of life, from the loss of a beloved family pet to the end of a lovers' relationship, but also stretches beyond grief to portray a wide range of mixed of emotions, acknowledging the bad with the good. A serious-minded reflection on the mysteries of life, death, and everything in between. Elegy on Toy Piano: You don't need a pony / to connect you to the unseeable / or an airplane to connect you to the sky. // Necessary it is to die / if you are a living thing / which you have no choice about. // Necessary it is to love to live / and there are many manuals / but in all important ways / one is on one's own. // You need not cut off your hand. / No need to eat a bouquet. / Your head becomes a peach pit / Your tongue a honeycomb. // Necessary it is to live to love, / to charge into the burning tower / then charge back out / and necessary it is to die. / Even for the grass, even for the pony / connecting you to what can't be grasped. // The injured gazelle falls behind the / herd. One last wild enjambment. // Because of the sores in his mouth, / the great poet struggles with a dumpling. / His work has enlarged the world / but the world is about to stop including him. / He is the tower the world runs out of. // When something becomes ash, / there's nothing you can do to turn it back. / About this, even diamonds do not lie.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Herky Jerky Insights, March 13, 2010

By 

Daniel H. Potter (SF California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Elegy On Toy Piano (Pitt Poetry Series) (Paperback)

This collection of poems is uneven ~ like the poems themselves each reeling from time to time between a spectacularly disjointed narrative and an excellent innuendo.

Sometimes feels a bit like walking down a visually stunning street in an unfamiliar city with one eye on the sidewalk. The unexpected comes at you from all directions. It is dizzying thrilling and confusing all at once but leaves you glad for having taken the ride. Like all great poetry these often leave you wanting more or uncertain about where you've just been. Not a page turner though ~ too much to take in on each one. A banquet of delights for those who appreciate a good non-sequitur.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars surreal but deep, November 9, 2006

By 

David Grotell "reader of poetry" (Lancaster PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Elegy On Toy Piano (Pitt Poetry Series) (Paperback)

This is one of the finer books of recent poetry I have found. While surreal, it also gives the reader something to think about. It's sometimes whimsical, but not completely inscrutable, as some postmodern poets are. Highly recommended.