First Course In Turbulence

by Dean Young

Finalist for ForeWord Magazine 1999 Poetry Book of the Year

With rapid shifts between subject and tone, sometimes within single poems, Dean Young’s latest book explores the kaleidoscopic welter of art and life. Here parody does not exclude the cri de coeur any more than seriousness excludes the joke. With surrealist volatility, these poems are the result of experiments that continue for the reader during each reading. Young moves from reworkings of creation myths, the index of the Norton Anthology of Poetry , pseudo reports and memos, collaged biographies, talking clouds, and worms, to memory, mourning, sexual playfulness, and deep sadness in the course of this turbulent book.

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

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

[Jon]

Dean Young was suggested to me by someone (a English/poetry professor) I met at a bar. She lent me three books, one of which was this collection, after finding out that I'm a big fan of Tony Hoagland. Little did I know that they are 'brothers'... at least as far as the acknowledgements are concerned. The poem specifically written about Hoagland and his lake was great as were about 75-80% of the poems. The 5 star rating comes not from the fact Dean Young's sense of humor hits the mark with me, but because I felt I could relate with a majority of the poems. Laughter is great, but being able to see yourself in the poem is what makes them magical for me. A few missed that mark, but its a high and difficult mark to set since we are all dynamic and different. Perhaps I'll be back to this collection in five years and find it completely uninteresting. However, any poem that closes with an offhand tip of the hat to Kant gets 5 stars in my world.

[Krzysztof]

Spoil Me Not

Dean, I finished your book about turbulence.
I bookmarked it with a boarding pass -
Charlotte to Kansas City -
whuddya think of that?
Kansas for vacation.
As I cut another notch in my weirdness belt,
I slip and pit my thumb like an avocado,
spilling blood on the pages. It's OK.
I bought the thing used and it came in fair
rather than the promised very good
condition. That bastard. At any rate
do you think someone will see the blood
and think Abandon All Blood
Ye Who Enter Here, or will they
flip randomly, say, Enter Here,
and wish they didn't find the passage
so damn true?
Surely you go in for bibliomancy, so
hold on, lemme open to the boarding pass . . .
Eech Ach Ooch
" . . . it would be best
if each was judged solely by what is within
but what's a judgment without a powdered wig?"
How do you judge, Dean?
I judge bloodlessly, like a white handkerchief
being written on as it is waived,
and the heart sends signals to the brain.

[Paula Koneazny]

"After eroticism, suffering is my favorite subject" pretty much sums up Dean Young's poetry. I enjoyed these poems more than I expected to, all the while wondering why & where from I had any expectations at all. As I'm generally less interested in wholes than in parts, I found many lines throughout the book to enjoy. Here's one of my favorites, from "Sky Dive": "I forgot all I learned/ throwing myself from a practice flight of stairs./ It drove me crazy, the way she smiled/ at strangers and I could never be/ a stranger."

[Catherine Corman]

When Leonardo is 11 and still sober,
he brings home a dead wren to disconnect.
His parents hope he is a genius and not
just another morbid little boy

-Dean Young, "Lives of the Inventors"

[James]

I didn't think much of the first Dean Young I read a few years ago, "Shock by Shock". I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this book, at least the first two of the three sections. I prefer narrative poetry and generally shy away from stream-of-consciousness poetry. Yet I was somehow captured by Young's conversational tone filled with surrealistic leaps. Numerous poems are fascinating and, as one might imagine from such work, the book is filled with startling and astonishing lines.

For me, however, the last section lacks the sizzle and zest of the first of the book.

[Charlotte Caine]

So inventive but with a really solid declarative thread. Felt like a good teacher. Flashes + shimmering, in young’s words

“Clouds come in / resembling the terrible things we believe / about ourselves”

“One yellow day on the labyrinthine / passageways”

“Eyesight turns into starlight”

“Shuddering cores of cinder”

“We had known each other but a short time / yet my love for her, like a coat hung / from a nail, resembled me in ways I / did not resemble myself as if something / dear had been reft from me only to be / restored with the matchbooks of hotels / I’d never been to in its pockets”

[jamie]

in its utter surreality, the stream of consciousness found in young’s poems here have a relative continuity that makes each work, although challenging, extremely fun to dive into and explore the inner workings of the emotional core of each poem.

[Greg11]

When the alchemy works it really, really works. When it doesn’t, he has a bit of an annoying shtick. That’s poetry for you. At his best he’s eccentric, tender, unique. But he’s also something of a rambling self-satisfied uncle. The ‘personality hire’. I like Young a lot but can’t love him

[Mirjam]

Go down any road far enough
and you'll come to a slaughterhouse,
but keep going and you'll reach the sea.

[Melissa Barrett]

Just fantastic. Similar to Beloved Infidel, which is one of my favorite books ever.

[Patricia Murphy]

Interesting repetition of themes: the poet as creature (bug or panther), The Tony/Mary poems, wearing the wrong clothes, mono-diets (first rice, then mashed potatoes), art, The French surrealists, Jimi Hendrix.

Each poem here has a new disjointedness, and the collection does too (as compared to Strike Everywhere, which was my most recent DY read).


"even the carpet/ is a tongue."

"I know someone could make a great weapon of me/ if only I was thrown hard enough."


"The problem isn't that you will become dust/but that you ever thought you aren't already."

"If you love me, now'd be a good time to say it."

"He thinks he dropped from a flap in the cosmos."

"erratically is how energy behaves/ when you put it in too tight a hive."

"Just try being a window/ and not taking a hammer to yourself."

"Sometimes it's hard to think we die just once."

[Ryan Werner]

About a dozen really great poems in here. The best ones make great use of Young's randomness, putting a line-of-thought through the things nobody else would have come up with. There's not a formulaic funny/funny/sad or sad/sad/funny sort of rhythmic cleverness here. Instead, Young's best work in this collection is rich like the world, everything always there.

The worst poems here are obtuse, like a bad cut-up or tolerable alt lit. Still, when Young's ideas and language meet up and come alive together, holy fuck.

Excited to read more, as I have several of his collections I'm finally jumping into after reading him here and there in anthologies.

[Eric Phetteplace]

There's something to be said for poems that, by focusing on a singular subject, gain precision and insight. Not much of that here. Young rambles, and don't get me wrong he's a hilarious and lush rambler, but in the end I wish he take his talents and try something different and more ambitious.

[RJ]

Had to read Tony Hoagland for class and hated him. Read an article by Hoagland about Young, and found via the snippets of poems quoted there that I would probably like Young more than Hoagland. Got this out of the library and found that I did.

[Clark Knowles]

A lovely book of poems. A hive of tiny things--ants, hearts, infants--swarming through Walt Whitman's dreams. There's big things here too: painters, oceans, myths. Funny and terrible, like love. What are you waiting for? You've already been given your free gift.

[Allyson]

Funny and sad and compelling. Young is one of the best contemporary poets writing today. If you get a chance to hear him read, then grab it, and prepare to be charmed.

[john steven]

it's all voice and shroud.

[Andrea Hewitt]

I love Dean Young...he rocks!

[Shaindel]

Excellent associative poetry.

[K8teebug]

Scott and I met Thanksgiving night over a poem in this book. They are so good, a romance can start over them.

[Sara]

Reminds me of Billy Collins

[Malcolm Alexander]

I liked "Strike Anywhere" much more.

[Tim Lepczyk]

Dean Young writes with a unique perspective. His poems move with a life of their own and make connections between ideas and images that are vivid and poignant.

[Leanna]

Funny, sad, surprising, interspersed with wisdom. Always entertaining!