Strike Anywhere

by Dean Young

'Although his work comes out of the poetries of Kenneth Koch, John Ashbery, and Frank O'Hara and James Tate, Young has his own original voice. The language, the invention, the imagination, and the sheer fun of his poems is astounding. It's not all dazzle either. The poems are also moving. This man reminds us that there is nothing more serious than a joke' - Charles Simic, final judge and author of "Jackstraws", "Walking the Black Cat", and "A Wedding in Hell".

Genres: Poetry

94 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1995

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

[Edita · Rating 3 out of 5]

But this year,
I will get it right, I will stare at a single branch
for all of May. I will know what it’s going through
at least on the fructifying surface.
[…]
In May I will listen to the bark whimper and split,
the blossoms blink from sleep.
[…]
A few pains remain,
become formalized, enacted in dance
but I’m careful not to catch myself.

[Biscuits · Rating 5 out of 5]

Impossible to know what I'd look like without this book.

[Alana · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Sometimes, it's best
to just get out of the way. The kind of day
you need both sunglasses and umbrella
but have neither have neither have neither.
A blue scum forms on the horizon and
in your hand is a number for the butcher.
I went to see the doctor. There's a hole in my heart."

[Kurly Fry · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Winter is scary enough but to follow it with Spring...
God must be demented, he must spend a lot of time
out in the cosmic downpour. I mean what
would you do if you had to create Beauty?
I'm afraid I'd start screaming, the most irksome
forms of insects coming from my mouth. I'm afraid
I'd come up with Death."

Young's Elegy on A Toy Piano was a super validating read for me early in my poetry journey. his blend of surrealism with confessional/conversational address emboldening my own. This collection has definitely got some heat to it. will likely be revisiting more than once. need to get my hands on another! poetry's a cool fuckin thing man. one more good book and I just might consider this guy one of my favorites.

"the nipple lowers to the mouth and
for the hundredth time, it's your last chance.
You're reinacting a failed astral life.
It doesn't exactly cough but there is

a last occluded breath then all
is silent except the fading elegaic
honking of the other swans, your love
beside you like one wrestled from a cloud."

[Ashwita Angeline · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I believe the body is a book left open
in the rain just as I believe the body
is a piano often out of tune. It's the
tuning that defeats me."

If you are yet to discover the genius of Dean Young, go ahead with this collection. Numerous rewards await.

[Ryan Ram Malli · Rating 5 out of 5]

simply phenomenal

[Kimmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE GOAT

[AlliD · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve heard more than once, that those who make us laugh hard are often people working to keep sadness at bay. The funniest people I know tend to prove this adage. But Dean Young’s Strike Anywhere, makes me imagine, instead, some kind of scrappy, impassioned TV detective who has Despair by the collar and up against a wall. He’s pumping Despair for information with Humor and Surrealism behind him as muscle. They do the good cop/ bad cop routine. At the end of the show they won’t be able to book Despair; nothing will stick – and he’ll strike again. But Dean has gotten the goods out of his suspect, for now. And we have a powerful collection, so unassuming with it’s yellow and blue cover.

There are many poems and lines than reverberate with this reader. There are litanies that scale minutia and profundity alike, then descend into explosive images. His endings rock. I’d share them but I don’t want to spoil the poems.

Here are some of the lines I underlined either because the image captivated me, the phrase was too true – or I had no idea what he meant.

“…summer will never / end and when it does it will never come again.”

“…Hearts, rotund with longing, / explode like dead horses left in a creek,”

“picking kiwis as a kind of penance for falling in love
the way parachutes are penance for gravity,”

“Deciduous trees, often confused by California/ climes, just bloom whenthehellever like how/ people have sex in French movies. Here,”

“I’m afraid I’d start screaming, the most irksome / forms of insects coming from my mouth.”

“Evening stars haggle for position,”

“the blossoms blink from sleep.”

The book is just full of moments that I liked to pause over.

The collection definitely nods to other great poets past and present. On the one hand I gobbled that up – but on the other I fear it leaves a lot of readers out of the joke. For example you have to have had a relationship with Wallace Stevens’ poems to know that a paper on the interpersonal and the poet – eeshhh…

But another example gave me such pleasure. Remember June Jordan’s

“(supposedly
the soft push of the ocean at the hushpoint of the shore
supposedly
the soft push of the ocean at the hushpoint of the shore
is beautiful
for instance)”

Dean’s lines reminded me of this…

“I’ll hear the ocean again, tugging.
Licking it’s lips.
I’ll lie in a hammock again.
I’ll hear rowboats knock against the pier
even when there are no rowboats near
No rowboats no rowboats no rowboats near.”

For me, the title of his collection serves as the anchor. Someone recently said to me, “anything can happen at anytime.” The title “Strike Anywhere” reminds me that tragedy, chaos, good fortune—are all possible at any moment. “Strike Anywhere” could also mark one’s own volition in the world. It can mean to throw a punch anywhere, to strike out on our own towards fortune, or strike out on the plate with the bases loaded. The dictionary has 88 separate entries for the word “strike”. Go look. But when I think of the word on …its always armed with the power of the thunderbolt. We know what it means. (And if you don’t – you will eventually.)

[Patricia Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe it's because I'm nursing my spring garden, but I really appreciate the references to plants in this collection: the bulbs not planted deeply enough, digging among the infant tomatoes. I do find that to be representative of the detail I love in this book--the small domestic moments, like listening to the radio as if the speaker is a friend, but then the next moment thinking "What did that fucker just say?"

Why does this collection remind me of Franz Wright's Wheeling Motel? I feel bad saying that. They were published 16 years apart. But there is something in Young's plaintive voice that resonates for me in the same way as Wright's did.

Here are some of my favorite moments:

"The leaves turn in tarnished rain/ like milk."

"Is there anything more ridiculous than choosing between despairs?"

"Men in white coats run from/ the burning asylum."

"How my aunt finally just put gravel in a cake."

"Perhaps all matter/ is just screaming congealed."

"I am not/ the only one composed of fractious murmurs."

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

The poems of Dean Young are influenced greatly by the surrealist movement. In his piece “Poem in Which Everyone Survives,” he writes that he “love[s]/how sentences, like lives, can follow their own/glittering vein” (12), and this statement sums up the structure and genesis of these poems. The titles, simple and abstract, are a starting point for the poet to follow a rope into his mind and see where it takes him. For me, the poems are hit or miss. When the connections work, the result is stunning (“Beside the Bodies of the Broken-Hearted,” 19), but often the poems get lost in their meandering. However, the language and images are fresh enough to keep even the most illogical pieces interesting for at least one reading.

[Sarah Sammis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Strike Anywhere by Dean Young is his third collection of poetry. It's a slim volume, nearly identical in length to Some Ether by Nick Flynn.

Dean Young is an award winning poet. His poems are surrealist. I like surrealism but in smaller doses. Eighty pages of surrealism was more than I could handle.

I managed to read seriously the first twenty pages. After that I resorted to skimming. Perhaps if I'd had the opportunity to read the collection at a slower pace or in a quieter location I would have had a more positive experience. As it was, the disjointed phrases and strange imagery made for a non comprehensible read.

[Dawn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Funny slash beautiful slash easy to read. To my pre-MFA delight. Skid and First Course in Turbulence are far better. But the early Dean Young is worth reading, if only for that great Magritte poem, Ready-Made Bouquet. He's got some great poems toward the end of the book about his nursing years, (he went to nursing school at one time). You know, scalpels and guts hanging out of corpses. These bio-med poems reminded me of Design with X (the first Dean Young that is almost impossible to find). So slowly, to sop up the juices.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can get jumbled up in his poetry, and then suddenly know exactly what he is talking about.

[Catherine Corman · Rating 5 out of 5]

One names few stars
and those uncertainly.

-Dean Young, "Instructions for Living"