Pleasure: Poems

by Gary Young

With subtlety and a big heart, Young pokes around a subject that is seldom written about with the same care and attention to detail as the darker themes of death and pain—pleasure. In No Other Life, Young examined the scary, unstoppable forces from which we seek shelter. In Pleasure, he doesn’t ignore them, but rather turns his gaze on those moments of huddled comfort, and finds joy in his children’s raw honesty and in the sensuousness of food, flowers, and everyday life. As approachable as it is masterful, Pleasure is itself a reason to smile.

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published April 1, 2006

About the author

Gary Young is a poet, artist, printer, and educator. His numerous awards include recognition from the Poetry Society of America—the 2013 Lucille Medwick Memorial Award (2013), the Shelley Memorial Award (2009), the William Carlos Williams Award (2003), and the Lyric Poem Award (2001). Gary has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities, and his print work is represented in the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Getty Center for the Arts, and special collection libraries throughout the country. He teaches Creative Writing, and is the Director of the Cowell Press at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title of Gary Young’s new prose poetry collection begs for one of those trite meaningless blurb summations like, “Pleasure is a pleasure!” But the truth is, there is as much death and sorrow in this book as there is light and bliss. And that is what makes Young’s poetry sagely and affirming in a substantial way; in a way that acknowledges, with a peaceful sigh, that life is sweet because it is over too soon. Young’s sincerity and apparent lack of attachment to the surrealist impulses that dominate prose poetry give him a unique voice in that milieu. His prose poetry lineage would be Bly by way of Ponge, but I think that sells Young short. His work is closer to that of the Deep Image poetics of Anthony Piccione and Li-Young Lee than any of his prose poetry predecessors. Young writes sublimely of earthly delights: eating raw fish, exhaling cigar smoke among the trees, making love while half-asleep. His poetry is a Zen-like paean to being, “in the moment.” He will help you get there.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

My confession is that what first drew me to this book was that I'd queried Heyday Press with my Diwata manuscript, and was pleased to find Gary Young's book to be so beautifully designed and produced, with minimalist white textured cardstock cover, greyscale clean serif font on thick stock white paper, left and right margin justified, untitled prose poems.

I started reading this last night in bed, as my current reading, Sesshu Foster's ATOMIK AZTEX, is not conducive to peaceful sleep. I read Gary Young's Pleasure all at once.

What's interesting to me about having enjoyed this book is that its settings are places in the natural world far from what I really experientially know, and as well, I anticipated the theme of "pleasure" to yield poems which were not rooted in the kinds of political, urban, ethnic, historical themes that appeal to me. What I enjoyed about this book was its active engagement in the natural world, each prose poem being a moment of the speaker's pleasure or delight as he experiences the natural world - rising Pacific ocean tides in the evening and sharing with his son a small island that's emerged from coastal rocks, mushroom hunting with his sons, bringing these home and cooking them with fresh herbs and a freshly caught fish. The taste and texture of the Skagit salmon unlike any other fish he's ever eaten. The poetic speaker builds, maintains, relishes in gatherings with dear friends, and he loves his family tenderly in these settings. I am also quite glad to read poetry of domesticity written from a male perspective that is indeed tender, open, and not heavy handed.

There are also moments where the pleasure is only a faint glimmer amidst the sadness of a loved one dying; when injecting morphine into "her" elderly, dying body (not sure who she is; I think it's the speaker's mother), she sighs twice as if she is coming. And then witnessing the dying, the speaker thinks, maybe this isn't so bad for now. What is only a faint glimmer of pleasure really does mean everything in this moment.

Then there is the form of the prose poem, its long and continuous lines compounding what is lush, boldly colored, sumptuous. The entire book is a sustained meditation then, and for this, I am glad not to see line breaks. I am glad to see each page devoted to each meditation.