Skid

By Dean Young

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0822957809
• ISBN13: 9780822957805
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Length: 112 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.3" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Unwavering, intelligent humor

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.

unfaltering tangibility

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.