Even in single poems, Young's tone and style vary. No one feeling or idea takes precedence over another, and their simultaneity is frequently revealed; sadness may throw a squirrelly shadow, joy can find itself dressed in mourning black. As in the agitated "Whirlpool Suite": "Pain / and pleasure are two signals carried / over one phoneline."

In taking up subjects as slight as the examination of a signature or a true/false test, and as pressing as the death of friends, Young's poems embrace the duplicity of feeling, the malleability of perception, and the truth telling of wordplay.

Elegy on Toy Piano

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In Elegy on Toy Piano, Dean Young's sixth book of poems, elegiac necessity finds itself next to goofy celebration. Even within single poems, Young's tone and style vary. No one feeling or idea takes precedence over another, and simultaneity is frequently revealed; sadness may throw a squirrelly shadow, joy can find itself dressed in mourning black. In taking up subjects as slight as the examination of a signature or a true/false test and as pressing as the death of friends, Young's poems embrace the duplicity of feeling, the malleability of perception, and the truth telling of wordplay.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Staccato and frantic, created by long series of declarative end-stopped lines, Young's sixth collection confidently balances moments of absurdity against high drama and raw admissions of emotion: "Our camouflage works best/ galloping en masse in discotheques./ We are very gentle with our young." The book is dedicated to the late Kenneth Koch; when Young writes of a power drill telling a canoe, "You don't have a clue," he really means it. The title poem recalls something of Auden's elegy for Yeats, in sentiment if not in tone, and slyly contains self-doubt: "His work has enlarged the world/ but the world is about to stop including him./ He is the tower the world runs out of." When Young's poetry works, his particular mix of the silly and the deadly serious increases the poignancy of the poems, so that in the first poem a long series of unconnected images and references (Marilyn Monroe, a squirrel hanging on a transformer, a third-grader "loose in dishwares") culminates heartrendingly in this question: "Will we never see our dead friends again?" This book of energetic, chronic juxtaposition pieces together a winning, tinkling set of send-offs for friends, and for feelings. (Feb.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.