Embryoyo: New Poems

by Dean Young

People have often tried to pin down what it is that Dean Young does. He has been variously called a New Age surrealist, son of the New York School, a comically tragic poet who knows the pain at the heart of a joke, a lunatic, a stuffed bunny, and a fire engine of the Romantic imagination. But if these things are true, they come at us in a unique, compelling, warm, funny, poignant, and sometimes cracked voice. Each of his poems is an enactment, a representation of psychic life as it moves through modes of argument, autobiography, and conventional lyric impulses while making room for textual experimentation. For Young, what is most important is that the poem be felt and that through his work one can participate in the alarm and beauty, the fury and injury inherent in being alive.

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

First published January 10, 2007

About the author

Dean 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.

Reviews

[Philip · Rating 1 out of 5]

although there were glimmers of brilliance in this book, i had to wade through it to find them. we could bring up a lengthy discussion on what, exactly art is, but i feel like that would be beating a dead horse. a very dead horse. mr. young, the horse is dead - i know poetry is art, but a little clarity? please?

[Krzysztof · Rating 5 out of 5]

Among many others, I loved these lines from Sean Penn Anti-Ode:

Must Sean Penn always look like he's squeezing
the last drops out of a sponge and the sponge
is his face?

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dean Young's poems are saturated with pop culture references and incredibly smart language. His tone is authoritative in the way that with anything he writes, you believe it as an absolute truth. It's intensely cerebral but there's also a gut reaction in many of his poems, because there is an underlying emotional, human content. I love his grand gestures simply because they are so sweeping, but they're absolutely relatable as well in the little details. Favorite poems in this book: "Ten Inspirations" makes me laugh every time I read it--different parts, though, depending on my mood and how the sections hit me. "Leaves in a Drained Swimming Pool" is a poem about poetry, a not uncommon idea in itself, but there's much to think about here. The first couple lines (it is a prose poem): "Poetry is an art of beginnings and ends. You want middles, read novels. You want happy endings, read cookbooks." It's a particular view of the poem as an item, an artifact, and one that closely matches Young's own style. Every line is a solid punch that when it hits you, stops you in your tracks. It demands your attention and makes you think.

[Adrianne Mathiowetz · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the few poetry books I've ever read cover to cover.

This may be my favorite few lines in the universe:

So I sat down
and dialed all your old numbers I don't
recommend it and each that was answered
pulled someone from deep cold water
I don't recommend it angry or numbed
with the bends. No one here by that name
then hanging up before my ingenuine
apology, just once music in the background
spiraling through the torn and borrowed world
so I could almost forget the roaring toward us
ball of flames.

Each poem is like that weird dream you have right before the alarm clock goes off, throwing you off kilter for a few hours. Occasionally this feels overdone: mostly, they just sneak up on you.

Common themes: tea bags/dead bodies, foam, fog/darkness, and coyotes/wolves.

[hh · Rating 4 out of 5]

i took a while to read through this because it is absolutely beautiful. if i have any complaint, it's that some of these poems felt like they ended too abruptly, too early. every poem has something spectacular going on in it. every poem is absolutely itself, absolutely unlike everything else and yet connected to the wide world. young is funny, smart, sarcastic, caustic, endearing, poignant. i hope that maybe if i read some dean young every few weeks, i'll imbibe a bit of his linguistic magic. some of his internal rhymes especially are out of control awesome. "leaves in a drained swimming pool" is just one of a number of stand-out, knock-outs in this collection. the energy of these poems reminds me that there are still continents to discover. i am thoroughly in love.

[Dieter · Rating 4 out of 5]

His poems gratify my urge for poetic spark. His word selection often produces quick emotional incisions and his imagery is very regularly striking. While I like that he guides well outside the box, I don't find full coherence in most of his poems. It's not that I'm necessarily looking for closure, but I wouldn't mind if the wagons circled back more, however, there are plenty of emotional challenges that enhance the pleasure I derive from his poems. I don't get sustained narratives. He deals out many more messages than I am able to pick up; some I begin to strain and fall down; others mostly opaque to me, but in the end I sense all the flickering and moved interestedly through his collection.

[D'Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Embryoyo is a mixed bag. Young's style can come across as kind of rambling and incoherent at times, but when he's on he's simply brilliant. Things that are mentioned at least twice in these poems: sand, coyotes, umbrellas, hearts, foam, flying, cats, death, heads, diamonds, mouths, funeral, daisies, snow, bricks, static, friends, fog, mothers, hair, sea, feathers, fathers, monkeys, thought balloons, sponges (specifically related to faces), seeds, music, babies, rumble strips and tea bags (specifically related to the dead bodies of small animals).

[Nate Harrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you love poetry you will consider Dean Young to be an original, fresh genius. If you don't love poetry you will consider Dean Young to be an original, fresh genius. Few poetry books I have read are as enlightening, entertaining, hilarious and damn cool as this one. He's writing for you and I, not for the savants of the genre. I wish this Embryoyo were as accessible as something by John Grisham.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a lot of energy in these poems. A lot of crazy images chained together, seemingly at random. It's a collection that rewards deep thought, and it's a collection that rewards just reading out loud to see how the poems make you feel.

[Sean · Rating 1 out of 5]

Is it a ‘style’ when nearly 95% of the poems are unintelligible? Why even title the poems when they could easily have been glued together to form a 60 page script of nonsense? There are some great lines here, truthfully, but without any coherent emotion or logic behind each poem I just feel flung about. Even kids say the darnedest things from time to time, but like this book you have to wade through a great deal of crud to get there. I read the whole collection and I will say that the poems I read aloud made a more positive impression on me than the ones I read silently. Who knows?

At the conclusion of this book I know nothing about Dean Young except that he probably thinks himself a clever devil. There is enough word salad here to feed all the coyotes and frogs that were displaced by Young’s poems.

[Brent Legault · Rating 2 out of 5]

I expect I'll be asked to turn in my Hipper-Than-Thou membership card for saying this (my dues are long overdue anyway), but I didn't much care for these poems. I got the feeling that they wanted my attention but didn't want me to know that they wanted my attention and so they spent a lot of time smokescreening their honest intent with practiced yawns and ceiling stares. But the plan, if it was in fact a plan, backfired because I never saw any reason to give these poems my full attention. While reading them (not all of them because I just couldn't do it), I found myself thinking about what I needed from the grocery store or I began to worry I'd left my coffee pot on all day or that maybe I'd have to clip my nails soon. Nothing that Dean Young and his ardently anaerobic poems did could keep me anchored to the page. Four or five lines in and my mind needed some air.

However, they might be the kind of poems that play better outloud. Perhaps if I heard them in their master's voice, perhaps then they would captivate me the way they secretely, cravenly want to.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not generally a Modern Poetry Reader. When we hit upon the idea of leaving this one in the bathroom, a creative center, magic was born. I think Mr. Young would take all of this the right way. Weird but not self-conscious and conversational without being non-poetic.

"Irreverence is irrelevance's revenge."

[Albert · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this after reading John Ashberry -- and it was a relief.
Surreal and playful. Witty. Brilliant. (READABLE! or is this a taboo of poetry criticism?)

He's a fan of Kenneth Koch, which I see, but D. Young's poems are thicker pudding. Cement.

[Jose Araguz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my first dip into the work of Dean Young. Mesmerized. Love the way his line takes in as much life as possible and illuminates via kinetic energy. Worth it to read "Clam Ode" and "Ten Inspirations". Would come back to for these poems alone.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Best poem in the whole shebang:

(from 'Ten Inspirations')

10
You are in your pajamas
eating cold pizza
when you decide to make a coyote.
Now all you need is a pregnant coyote.

[Kamili · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dean Young is sort of amazing.

[Gary McDowell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Update 9/20/2007: someone whom I respect told me my work resembles this particular book of Young's. I must read it again.

Update 10/9/07: well, he's okay.

[Julian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Young's best book, I think. Interesting to see how he's honed his style into this over the years.

[Anne Ishii · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dean Young is amazing and this collection is as good as anything he's written, which is to say very good.

[Jordan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wonderfully odd poems. Some are terrific, some are ok.

[Zach · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four stars cause I like "Elegy on Toy Piano" better and it wouldn't be fair to lump them together. Still rules!

[Catherine Corman · Rating 5 out of 5]

All that a human is made of is gold,
very very little gold.

-Dean Young, "Dear Friend"

[Whiskeyb · Rating 5 out of 5]

some bits are just about perfect (for me)

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm loving this so far.

[Kristen Hoggatt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Say yes, Dean.

[Melting Uncle · Rating 5 out of 5]

At first, some of this stuff didn't make sense to me. After I looked at it for a while, it did. Fun!!

[Sarah]

Embryoyo: New Poems by Dean Young (2007)

[Matthew Richards · Rating 5 out of 5]

"You'd think my brain would be edible
but it's just seaweed tangled in a TV
and my dreams remain attached to me
by silver thumbtacks left over from

the Big Flash that I've traced back
to the first 0.0008th second when
everything was so crammed together,
the angels could hardly lift their flutes."

Surrealism done right. I could read this a thousand times and never tire of it. Philosophically extravagant, a dense buffet of divergent meanings. It's like a mad grammarian sutured a football field of zen koans end-to-end into a train and splattered the train with coyote murals and the train went off course and plowed into the God Barn.

Dean Young is the poet I've been waiting my whole life to read. I'm glad he found me when he did.

[Kimmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

DEAN YOUNG RIPS MY HEART OUT AND TAKES A WET BITE

[Amber Bourassa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very musical and fun