In this latest collection, Al Young demonstrates why his poetry is loved and followed worldwide. At a time when most American poets are writing what Lawrence Ferlinghetti calls "a kind of prose masquerading in the typography of poetry," Al Young sings. His ear for music never lets him forget that the body is the boom-box of poetry. A master of dramatic monologue, Young continues to work in the many voices and forms that distinguish his work. Rare among contemporary poets, he almost never uses the pronoun "I" to refer to himself. His contempt for the unremitting arrogance of the confessional mode is hardly a secret. Like poets across the ages, Young is grounded and experienced in the pride and prejudice of his own times, and yet he can jump right over the moon and straight at the sun. Whether sonnetizing love or loss, laughing at smug social presumptions, condemning CIA drug deals, the thriving prison industry, bio-tech food, greed in a darkening stockocracy, or celebrating eternal verities, Al Young writes with spirit, imagination, and hope.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Mellow echoes of Langston Hughes's "Dream Deferred" rumble in the title of Young's latest collection, but the 140-odd short poems here have at least as much to do with Charles Bukowski's pointed ramblings, as they are long on mystique and sentiment. A readable and topical history of the decade in op-eds and sermons, this book could nevertheless use weeding; Young (Conjugal Visits) goes for the easy laugh and knowing nod a few times too often. At their best, though, these meditations on love, travel, politics and misbehavior transcend their plays on familiar phrases: "Human conditioning feels nothing like air/ conditioning" with shockingly specific language "`Those were the nastiest stewardesses/ I've ever seen'? `How nasty were they?'/ `Take my word, they was nasty. They had/ strings of spit hangin from they mouth,/ they had make-up all graped up in they eyes./ O they was nasty!'" Casual blank verse gives way to fluid, rhyming iambic pentameter in poems like "The Old Country": "What is it we want,/ or need to haul or lug like Motorolas/ of the blood? Beep! The mileage we squander/ on these jumps from mayonnaise Minnesotas/ to curry Calcuttas, from Tokyos you could wander." Readers will have to search for such standouts, but they sing out like Motorolas of the blood. (May) Forecast: Young, whose oeuvre includes hard-to-find novels and memoirs, was the judge of this year's Cave Canem poetry prize. This collection should set the stage for a larger-budget selection of his work. And the loyal fans of his San Francisco base will certainly pick it up in local stores.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
About the Author
The author of several books of poetry, AL YOUNG is also a novelist and essayist. He is the recipient of NEA, Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships as well as the PEN/Library of Congress Award for Short Fiction and the PEN/USA Award for Non-Fiction.
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