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Bender: New and Selected Poems
"Young's Bender is a book of survival and strength, of seeing even in the smallest things the heights of what we can be. That's as good a definition of contemporary poetry as any."—NPR "This book reads like a long, breathless thank you for life's seemingly random jumble of beauty, strangeness, tenderness, and joy."— Los Angeles Times "The reader's mind shoots through [Young's poems] like the steel ball in a pinball machine, dinging around, racking up points. Dean's poems are amazingly fun."— BOMB "After 10 books over 20-odd years, Young has become one of our most imitated his jocular jumps from topic to topic, debts to Surrealist dream-logic, mixture of postmodern oddity, stand-up comedy and weighty pathos land his work somewhere between John Ashbery (to whom Young owes much) and Billy Collins (whose affability Young shares)." — Publishers Weekly "Young revitalizes the lyric by reminding us that Art must never be less explosive and majestic and joyous than Life, lest it not only be no temporary substitute for Life but also no fitting representation of (or challenge to) life's regularities and irregularities. Bender will make you laugh, reflect, and marvel at how the contrary impulses and instantiations of both Life and Art can so readily be distilled in the sensibilities of a single man, or—in the case of Bender —a single book." — The Huffington Post "Dean Young's New & Selected Poems provides a direct experience with all the stunning possibilities of language at its most sublime."— The Journal From "Even Funnnier Looking Now": If someone had asked me then,
Do you suffer from the umbrage of dawn's
dark race horses, is your heart a prisoner
of raindrops? Hell yes! I would have said
or No way! Never would I have said,
What could you possibly be talking about?
I had just gotten to the twentieth century
like a leftover girder from the Eiffel Tower.
My Indian name was Pressure-Per-Square-Inch.
I knew I was made of glass but I didn't
yet know what glass was made hot sand
inside me like pee going all the wrong
directions, probably into my heart
which I knew was made of gold foil
glued to dust . . .
Do you suffer from the umbrage of dawn's
dark race horses, is your heart a prisoner
of raindrops? Hell yes! I would have said
or No way! Never would I have said,
What could you possibly be talking about?
I had just gotten to the twentieth century
like a leftover girder from the Eiffel Tower.
My Indian name was Pressure-Per-Square-Inch.
I knew I was made of glass but I didn't
yet know what glass was made hot sand
inside me like pee going all the wrong
directions, probably into my heart
which I knew was made of gold foil
glued to dust . . .
- GenresPoetry
300 pages, Hardcover
First published September 11, 2012
34 people are currently reading
242 people want to read
About the author
Dean Young
47 books106 followersDean Young is the author of many collections of poetry, including Shock by Shock, Bender: New and Selected Poems, and Elegy on a Toy Piano, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He teaches at the University of Texas, Austin.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
June 5, 2015
(Maybe 3.5, in revisiting the best poems.)
Really great if inventiveness/playfulness is enough for you. If, like me, you want your poetry to have some emotional pulse that comes from--not logic necessarily, but clarity of thought & association--you'll find a lot of these whimsical, clever poems not without their great moments but overall pretty thin and entirely forgettable.
But when he's writing from the heart and not just the mind, Dean Young is fucking good at poems. "Whale Watch" is a perfect example; I'll be rereading that for life.
Just too often (for my particular taste) there seems to be a sacrifice of meaning-making, of amber-trapping something real and resonant, for the sake of the language play and illogical whimsy for which he is so celebrated.
Really great if inventiveness/playfulness is enough for you. If, like me, you want your poetry to have some emotional pulse that comes from--not logic necessarily, but clarity of thought & association--you'll find a lot of these whimsical, clever poems not without their great moments but overall pretty thin and entirely forgettable.
But when he's writing from the heart and not just the mind, Dean Young is fucking good at poems. "Whale Watch" is a perfect example; I'll be rereading that for life.
Just too often (for my particular taste) there seems to be a sacrifice of meaning-making, of amber-trapping something real and resonant, for the sake of the language play and illogical whimsy for which he is so celebrated.
February 20, 2024
2.5!
I liked a lot of the poems but this collection ends up feeling pretty bloated. Occasionally the poems feel like they lack an emotional center. But the shining moments do shine.
I liked a lot of the poems but this collection ends up feeling pretty bloated. Occasionally the poems feel like they lack an emotional center. But the shining moments do shine.
December 30, 2024
Honestly, great work. Definitely also worth reading a bit on Dean Young’s life. I was at first really confused at certain points throughout this book; some poems would lose me completely because I didn't know what they were trying to say. Turns out that his work is meant to have a surreal, otherworldly kind of quality. The purpose of his work is "demonstration rather than explanation." He does a wonderful job of employing odd devices, enjambment, and makes voltas work tremendously in his favor. He's got some of the best word choice and thought displays I've ever read. As an aside, apparently he died of COVID complications in 2022, with an unpublished work having the last lines of "Some cries never reach us / Even though they're our own. The best endings are abrupt."
August 29, 2018
What I continue to find stunning about Young's poems is—despite their often absurdist illogic, associative twists, and non sequiturs—they pronounce clearly and honestly their emotional truths, resonant truths that only benefit from their contradiction with the daring wildness of the rest of the poem's language.
July 18, 2021
It took me almost a year to read this book, not just because it's longer than a normal poetry collection, but because I prefer to take the poet's work in smaller bites. The poems are organized alphabetically, which I'm not sure if it's not some sort of surrender to impossibility.
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March 18, 2020You may read my review of this & other books at https://miscmss.blogspot.com/2020/03/...
June 25, 2022
There were highlights of combos that intertwined the beauty of the mundane, listlessness, and inventive forays into a detached nostalgia. But overall, I at no point found myself urged to dive back in. Also lots of random medical jargon, which seemed a bit pompous to me
"We'll stay in the dark like lesser angels evicted"
“Down to where consciousness cries 'Make me new,' but pleads, as pitiably, 'Cherish me as I was.'”
"We'll stay in the dark like lesser angels evicted"
“Down to where consciousness cries 'Make me new,' but pleads, as pitiably, 'Cherish me as I was.'”
November 23, 2015
Dean Young IS a bender though I'm not sure he's ON one. This was my first exposure to Young's work, and I left it joyful, jealous, and just a touch confused.
Young's linguistic dexterity resonates on every page of this book, in every poem. Whether he's conjuring similes from his deep unconscious like,"I could no longer care, only in a detached way like a monk for a scorpion," or talking about the oldest things in a new way, "father, you bend the nail but keep hammering because hammering makes the world," Young's skill is everywhere evident. One line that's stayed with me is his simile: "he dies like snow melting from a fence."
It is lines like those and Young's trust that "every word is a euphemism" which make me jealous as a writer that I didn't create some of these poems. Young knows that "inside everyone of us is a staircase" and he is unafraid to ascend and descend his on an errand to find "something immense and in tact."
I can't help but include so many of his lines in my review because they sparkle and rage with such discovery.
The reason, however, I didn't give this book five stars is simply idiosyncratic: at times, the surrealism which informs and inspires Young is a bit distancing. Some of the poems are difficult to find any foothold in--not that every poem need make "sense" in a logical lockstep fashion, not at all, just that several offer no grounding in experience and swirl into abstraction. Sometimes, the glacial truth which Young is exploring calls for such verbal pioneering--there is no way to get there with an old map. But on those rare occasions Young loses me and is out on his own.
I highly recommend this collection, especially to young poets looking for something more accessible than Ashbery but more inventive and risky than say, Collins (whom I love, by the way)
Young's linguistic dexterity resonates on every page of this book, in every poem. Whether he's conjuring similes from his deep unconscious like,"I could no longer care, only in a detached way like a monk for a scorpion," or talking about the oldest things in a new way, "father, you bend the nail but keep hammering because hammering makes the world," Young's skill is everywhere evident. One line that's stayed with me is his simile: "he dies like snow melting from a fence."
It is lines like those and Young's trust that "every word is a euphemism" which make me jealous as a writer that I didn't create some of these poems. Young knows that "inside everyone of us is a staircase" and he is unafraid to ascend and descend his on an errand to find "something immense and in tact."
I can't help but include so many of his lines in my review because they sparkle and rage with such discovery.
The reason, however, I didn't give this book five stars is simply idiosyncratic: at times, the surrealism which informs and inspires Young is a bit distancing. Some of the poems are difficult to find any foothold in--not that every poem need make "sense" in a logical lockstep fashion, not at all, just that several offer no grounding in experience and swirl into abstraction. Sometimes, the glacial truth which Young is exploring calls for such verbal pioneering--there is no way to get there with an old map. But on those rare occasions Young loses me and is out on his own.
I highly recommend this collection, especially to young poets looking for something more accessible than Ashbery but more inventive and risky than say, Collins (whom I love, by the way)
September 13, 2014
Reading a Dean Young poem is like trying to interpret a Joan Miro painting: colorful wordplay here - a witticism there - is that a person I see within the seemingly random shapes?
Beautiful poetry, but I have no idea what the hell is going on. Here is one that moved me terribly one night and did nothing for me on a re-read. Go figure. (My book is marked up with arrows pointing to intriguing one-liners.)
Drunker Etc.
It's not just a choice between fire or ice,
between Bosch or Botticelli,
the bright eternity or the dark one.
There's the eternity of unwritten
thank you notes and waiting on hold
for someone in India to straighten out
your Internet connection.
In front of poetry, a brick wall of prose.
Is it rumor? No, Pavarotti has died.
Finally you realize your teacher's an animal too.
You wait for the elevator down
to the hospital cafeteria wondering
if anything will be different when you get back.
You staple color copies of your lost cat
with three phone numbers
to the telephone poles in the neighborhood.
Not even January, already you've shoveled
your driveway seven times. How long
does it take to learn how to fold
an origami rose? For a whole year
you said nothing about how you felt.
Then tequila goes round the fire
and after a swig, you're supposed to admit
what you can't live without.
Beautiful poetry, but I have no idea what the hell is going on. Here is one that moved me terribly one night and did nothing for me on a re-read. Go figure. (My book is marked up with arrows pointing to intriguing one-liners.)
Drunker Etc.
It's not just a choice between fire or ice,
between Bosch or Botticelli,
the bright eternity or the dark one.
There's the eternity of unwritten
thank you notes and waiting on hold
for someone in India to straighten out
your Internet connection.
In front of poetry, a brick wall of prose.
Is it rumor? No, Pavarotti has died.
Finally you realize your teacher's an animal too.
You wait for the elevator down
to the hospital cafeteria wondering
if anything will be different when you get back.
You staple color copies of your lost cat
with three phone numbers
to the telephone poles in the neighborhood.
Not even January, already you've shoveled
your driveway seven times. How long
does it take to learn how to fold
an origami rose? For a whole year
you said nothing about how you felt.
Then tequila goes round the fire
and after a swig, you're supposed to admit
what you can't live without.
November 17, 2012
I rarely give one stars, and maybe I should've given these poems more of a chance, but ugh.
Let me explain: I like to read my baby poetry while I nurse her; relaxing to her, relaxing to me. I saw this book in my local library's featured new books and picked it up, seemed promising. I read five or six of the gazillion poems. Thinking maybe things got better towards the middle, I randomly flipped to a page and started reading. My husband walked in and literally though I was stringing random words together. He flipped to another page, had me read that, and by the end we were in hysterics, it was so bad.
Maybe this guy is genius and it's just not my kind of poetry, and maybe it's meant to be digested slowly. In any case, I'd much rather read Anne Carson any day.
Let me explain: I like to read my baby poetry while I nurse her; relaxing to her, relaxing to me. I saw this book in my local library's featured new books and picked it up, seemed promising. I read five or six of the gazillion poems. Thinking maybe things got better towards the middle, I randomly flipped to a page and started reading. My husband walked in and literally though I was stringing random words together. He flipped to another page, had me read that, and by the end we were in hysterics, it was so bad.
Maybe this guy is genius and it's just not my kind of poetry, and maybe it's meant to be digested slowly. In any case, I'd much rather read Anne Carson any day.
June 20, 2014
I discovered Dean Young after reading a poem in New Yorker. This collection spans his career, but since it is arranged alphabetically by title instead of chronologically, provides little insight to the development of his hilarious, surreal voice. So what? I haven't enjoyed poetry this much in a while.
May 29, 2016
I liked Dean Young's first book of poetry from way back, so looked forward to reading this one expectantly. Alas, there were some poems in this collection I liked, but many were just too much to slog through and did not speak to me.
December 25, 2012
mind in circus death life
June 22, 2013
Absolutely wonderful.
June 5, 2014
Dean Young is fantastic. These poems are a great introduction.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews