Creature Feature

by Dean Young

The heartachingly searching, irreverently wisecracking, and stubbornly uncompromising poems that walked a formal tightwire just before Young's death in 2022.


Creature Feature is Dean Young's first posthumous collection since his death in 2022. More feisty, hilarious, surreal, and heartbreaking than ever, Young and his tireless inventiveness are on full display in fierce poems that refuse to compromise yet are guided by love and amazement at living. These poems resound with risk-taking, mischief, and aching beauty. Young remains committed to the generative possibilities of poetry even as he writes his own elegy again and again.


Young envisioned Creature Feature to serve as the third and final installment in a trilogy that includes Shock by Shock (Copper Canyon Press, 2015) and Solar Perplexus (Copper Canyon Press, 2019). Together, these three books were imagined during the turbulent years following his successful heart-transplant surgery, and they demonstrate a vigorous recommitment to artistic recklessness and poetic inventiveness. Through all their painful genius, these poems reveal an abiding awareness that time is short and art in our time is more urgent than ever.

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

Published April 7, 2026

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

[Dr. Devine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I have a new poet to add to my favourites.

Wit, humour, and dealing with a brush with death, all masterfully balanced in dense, thought-provoking lines.

The last poem in particular, knowing that he died before this collection was complete, is particularly jarring.

I can't wait to read more.

[Tessa Berman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly beautiful posthumous collection! Dean Young’s poetic soul is pure energy, and these pieces tackling his mortality are explosive. Zest for life, singular humor, and intimations of melancholy saturate every page, with next to no filler. The stream of consciousness is rolling, the NY School style colloquialisms abound, and the ars poeticas are delicious! When my time comes, I hope to leave on something as stunning as “If Anyone Asks.”

“The best endings are abrupt.”

[Lottie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finished this and then opened it right back up again

[Troy Leo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible. Standouts: Big item pickup, The language of flowers is in much disrepair, Garden of Earthly Delights, Island life, and others I didn't write down. Read this in 2 days for class which means I do need to reread it eventually, I need a physical copy. This was heartbreaking. I love you Dean Young.

[James O'Bannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sealey Challenge day 7

[Dol Leander · Rating 2.5 out of 5]

A posthumous collection is always harder to read. The knowledge that the author has said all they're capable of haunts the pages. This is especially true for this work as themes of death rest at the front of the writing. Even so, it's impossible not to feel the life of the work. There is a bright energy and strange humor explored alongside the heartache. Each line of poetry is skillfully laid out with a vividness that allows the mind to visualize each piece the same way one might view a surrealist painting.