Open Books: Events
September 30, 2010 07:30 PM
DAVID YOUNG
David Young's contributions to poetry are considerable. A professor at Ohio's Oberlin College for some years, he has served as an editor of that school's esteemed literary magazine, FIELD, and of its well respected press, known for its contemporary poetry series and its works in translation. He has long been a translator himself, most recently of the poetry of Du Fu and Paul Celan. But he travels here today to read from his own work, the just published Field of Light and Shadow: Selected and New Poems ($27.95 Knopf), which draws from his decades of thoughtful, often deeply moving poetry. While he is indeed a poet of the Midwest, a landscape his work evokes with grace, he also casts his mind and vision to the larger world -- "Faint dawn, pale apricot, pale lime, / and the owl sails silent to his roost... / the history of the earth would be my gospel." This is a generous volume from one who has made a life practicing and studying his craft -- "At seventy now, I seem to be filled with voices, / scraps of the past, night shade, / blown visions, questions, / the touch of past parlayers, poets, friends. // As if I’m a vessel that must soon pour out / my brimming contents...."
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