Skid (Pitt Poetry Series) [Paperback]

Dean Young (Author)

Book Description

Series: Pitt Poetry Series | Publication Date: January 31, 2002

Dean Young is one of the premier surrealist poets writing today. In Skid, his fifth book of poems, social outrage vies with comic excess. He embraces the autobiographical urge with fury and musically lush exclamations. Whether through the dark facts of mortality or the celebratory surprises of the imagination, these poems proclaim vitality and alertness, wasting nothing. From Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner’s "Meep! Meep!" to remembrances of lost loves and laments about the future, Young’s poems reveal his faith in the genius of calamity and the redemptive power of fun.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The talky, impatient verse of Young's fifth collection skids all over mainstream American culture and across the language, jumbling comic or startling phrases together in hot pursuit of comedy, shock or charm. "A swimming pool on the 18th floor? King Lear done by sock puppets?" Anything goes in a Young poem, especially if it makes the poet sound hip, or insouciant, or just plain strange: "Initially I too appeared between the legs of a woman in considerable discomfort," he opens one mock-autobiographical poem. "A poem should be a noise then it should know when to shut up. It should be naked in the rain or nearly so"; "Tragically, I took over Sue's damaged iguana." Elsewhere, Young (First Course in Turbulence) visits "the Caf‚ of One Thousand Adjectives" and "the Museum of This Moment" and pays homage (by name, repeatedly) to his poetic peers and friends Tony Hoagland and Mary Ruefle (both of whom blurb the book). At his best as in the mock-instructional "Whale Watch" Young makes one-of-a-kind, read-aloud poems from the verbal detritus he juggles. Set against their distant models in O'Hara or Ashbery, though, Young's poems can be far more predictable than their surfaces make them seem: they're light, sometimes information-free po-biz comedy for an information age. With this much fun (and this many inside jokes), however, Young's champions will hardly mind: as his speaker notes, "It's an unstable world, babe."

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

There are now so many things and ideas in the world that it addles even the best-intentioned mind. Young is sane enough, a liberal who concludes "Republican Victory," which consists of thoughts that "are but junk mail . . . / to the people of the future," with the fear that "they'll never forgive us." You could question his sensibilities, but not his capabilities. Elsewhere, however, it is a different story. In "Today's Visibility," a museum-hopping excursion becomes impossible because the exhibits are too delicate to be observed; seeing them is only the first in a series of unrealizable experiences in a day that outraces the poet's trajectory through it. If there is so much stuff that can't be seen, there are also so many ideas about any one thing that no single idea can be preferred; thus in "Blue Garden," what "a poem should be" becomes a serial bait-and-switch game until the poet, concluding, huffs, "The truest endings are abrupt." Surrealism seldom seems as much like real life as in Young's hilarious and cautionary poems. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 112 pages
• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press; 1 edition (January 31, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822957809
• ISBN-13: 978-0822957805
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #347,098 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unwavering, intelligent humor, July 6, 2004

By 

Carrie McGath (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Skid (Pitt Poetry Series) (Paperback)

I love Dean Young. I love Dean Young very much. There are many, many contemporary poets I love, but Young's poetry has, I don't know, more OOMPH (is that the correct spelling? I hope you know what I mean). But this OOMPH, this power is not lacking in the poetry of other contemporary poets, it is just more natural with Dean Young. My copy of Skid is worn to a point of obscenity. I feel so guilty that I have turned something so beautiful into a dog-eared mess, but isn't great art here for consumption?

Poetry readers of all levels (and even those readers with more nichey interests) will thoroughly enjoy Young. The poems in Skid are sometimes tragic in their humor that sometimes bordelines on the inappropriate (but in a good way!), and sometimes the poems are quite simple and engulfed by the heart and musings of a true twentieth-century poet.

Read Dean Young, and I am sure this nonsensical review will begin to make sense.

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars unfaltering tangibility, May 18, 2003

By 

Dan Gould "Voracious Bookmonger" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Skid (Pitt Poetry Series) (Paperback)

Dean's "First Course in Turbulence" was perhaps the first collection of poetry I have ever enjoyed in entirety. I became a devout follower from the moment my brain first sundered his work; and had the recent privilege to hear Dean read from his new collection, "Skid". With an amazing gift for florid language, Dean still manages to talk about life in a manner that makes his content accessible to a copious amount of readers. What marks "Skid" as unique is perhaps its more personally oriented quality, when compared to previous collections. Dean manages to reveal chunks of his persona along with his commentary on the intricacies of life. Simply said, this is a collection that should adorn your bookshelf.