The Second Person: Poems (Stahlecker Series Selections) [Paperback]

C. Dale Young (Author)

Book Description

Series: Stahlecker Series Selections | Publication Date: March 9, 2007

Drawing on traditional forms including the villanelle and pantoum, and writing with an ear for a beautiful, resounding rhythm, C. Dale Young investigates the lessons of the trainee doctor and documents the experiences of the practicing physician, remarking on the ways medicine alone is not enough: "Do not let a man // abandon hope," says Saint Luke. And, as with the remarkable long sequence, "Triptych at the Edge of Sight," these are also poems of intimacy, depicting with rich color and poignant contemplation the way art struggles to "capture [. . .] on canvas. / Memory, do not fail me. Let me try again."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. The title of Young's second collection evokes the book's many concerns: romantic partnership and sex (especially between two men), the nature of the other, and the "you" to whom many of these poems are addressed. Young's preoccupation with the body comes from his medical background (he is a practicing physician) filtered through an aesthete's attention to form and lyric (most of these poems are in neat tercets). Young's speakers are caught between the desire to understand and the desire to simply desire: "It is not the bone below the skin that I kiss/ but the silence clinging to the skull's curve." The poems come to the page already burdened by a doctor's knowledge that mortality rules over even love, and the natural world becomes an analogy for human suffering: "the rain spreads like a bruise over the ocean." The excellent long poem "Triptych at the Edge of Sight" sketches a blurry romantic "landscape filled with failure" whose all-too-human inhabitants may or may not find spiritual consolation. When Young's two worlds—the medical and the metaphorical—merge, they create a love poetry that is sublime because and in spite of its knowledge. (Apr.)
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Review

Lines from a man whose profession demands that he bear witness to the grimmest of news become strangely comforting. -- RAIN TAXI, Fall 2007

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Product Details

• Paperback: 75 pages
• Publisher: Four Way Books; First edition. edition (March 9, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1884800769
• ISBN-13: 978-1884800764
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,574,904 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #78 in Books > Gay & Lesbian > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Gay

More About the Author

C. Dale Young practices Medicine full-time, edits poetry for the New England Review, and teaches in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for writers. His work has appeared in many literary magazines and journals, and has been included in a number of anthologies, including volumes of the Best American Poetry. He lives in San Francisco.