Customer Reviews

Elegy On Toy Piano (Pitt Poetry Series)

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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.

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.

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.

Delightfully Playful and Dark! I couldn't put it down.
This was my first experience with Dean Young's poetry and I am officially a fan!
Check out my review at
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