Calendar Home
Previous Reading:
« MARY SZYBIST
Next Reading:
JEAN-PAUL PECQUEUR »
|
|
Open Books: Event Archive
May 22, 2007 07:30 PM
C. DALE YOUNG
In The Second Person ($14.95 Four Way), C. Dale Young has composed a moody book of longing, loss, and eroticism. Many of the poems are set in Florida, with tropical intensity and a mysterious distance alive in the interpersonal and the environment. The poetry is rich in imagery, but Young questions the purpose of things of the world -- "Whip of sea-grass covering the dune / or the child's kite blown from her hands: / on what should the eye train itself?" Feeding the over-riding elegiac tone are glances toward a disinterested god who exists on the periphery of a failed relationship that Young relives and grieves. There is humor, too, as with the title of a homoerotic poem likening lust to a force of nature. That title? "Maelstrom." Young is a medical doctor, and this collection includes poems pertaining to that field, interestingly focusing on failure. The close of the piece "Prognosis" finds him considering telling a patient his cancer treatment has not been effective -- "Do not let a man // abandon hope, says Saint Luke, / for hope is a step toward salvation. / Just then, the silence will be almost palpable." The sadness in these poems is alive and oddly comforting.
|
|
