Dean Young

Education

Young received his Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from Indiana University.

Education period of Dean Young in Indiana University Bloomington

Career

Young has taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the low-residency MFA program at Warren Wilson College, and the University of Texas-Austin where he holds the William Livingston Chair of Poetry.

Described as one of the standard-bearers of modern surrealism, poet Dean Young has been the recipient of a variety of fellowships and awards, an acknowledgment that he is being read and heard. Young's first book of poetry, Design with X, was published in 1988, followed by Beloved Infidel in 1992. Publishers Weekly reviewed Beloved Infidel and praised it. "Like many of the 'language poets,' Young seems interested in issues of form vs. formlessness and the tradition of indeterminate language, yet the work remains coherent." His most recent books are Bender: New and Selected Poems, Fall Higher, and The Art of Recklessness.

Strike Anywhere, Young's third collection won the Colorado Poetry Prize in 1995. After 1999's First Course in Turbulence, Young's 2002 collection, Skid, received high marks. His work has been included in The Best American Poetry anthology multiple times, dating back to 1993. Elegy on Toy Piano was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Young was the Poet Laureate for Texas in 2014.

Young himself acknowledges a subtle evolution in his poetry, as he observed on the University of Iowa Web site: "I think my first two books were relatively austere. In the following books, I tried to work toward celebration and joy and goofiness. But life conspires against you, hand you tragedy, proves that nothing can last. I think all of that is more apparent in Skid than it was in First Course in Turbulence."

Achievements

Young is recognized as one of the most energetic, influential poets writing today. One of his works, Elegy on Toy Piano, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Dean Young

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author poet

Dean Young is an American poet. Often cited as a second-generation New York School poet, he derives influence and inspiration from the work of André Breton, Paul Éluard, and the other French Surrealist poets.

Background

Young was born on July 18, 1955, in Columbia, Pennsylvania.

Education

Young received his Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from Indiana University.

Education period of Dean Young in Indiana University Bloomington

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Career

Young has taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the low-residency MFA program at Warren Wilson College, and the University of Texas-Austin where he holds the William Livingston Chair of Poetry.

Described as one of the standard-bearers of modern surrealism, poet Dean Young has been the recipient of a variety of fellowships and awards, an acknowledgment that he is being read and heard. Young's first book of poetry, Design with X, was published in 1988, followed by Beloved Infidel in 1992. Publishers Weekly reviewed Beloved Infidel and praised it. "Like many of the 'language poets,' Young seems interested in issues of form vs. formlessness and the tradition of indeterminate language, yet the work remains coherent." His most recent books are Bender: New and Selected Poems, Fall Higher, and The Art of Recklessness.

Strike Anywhere, Young's third collection won the Colorado Poetry Prize in 1995. After 1999's First Course in Turbulence, Young's 2002 collection, Skid, received high marks. His work has been included in The Best American Poetry anthology multiple times, dating back to 1993. Elegy on Toy Piano was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Young was the Poet Laureate for Texas in 2014.

Young himself acknowledges a subtle evolution in his poetry, as he observed on the University of Iowa Web site: "I think my first two books were relatively austere. In the following books, I tried to work toward celebration and joy and goofiness. But life conspires against you, hand you tragedy, proves that nothing can last. I think all of that is more apparent in Skid than it was in First Course in Turbulence."

Achievements

Young is recognized as one of the most energetic, influential poets writing today. One of his works, Elegy on Toy Piano, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Book

Primitive Mentor (The ninth collection for this Pulitzer Prize finalist, wh...) 2008

Solar Perplexus (In Solar Perplexus, Dean Young uses the surreal as the th...) 2019

Elegy On Toy Piano (In Elegy on Toy Piano, Dean Young's sixth book of poems, ...) 2005

Skid (Dean Young is one of the premier surrealist poets writing...) 2002

Shock by Shock 2015

Fall Higher 2011

Bender: New and Selected Poems 2012

First Course In Turbulence 1999

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Views

Young's poetry has been described as witty, exhilarating, and urgent by readers and critics alike. Influenced by the New York School poets, and Surrealists such as Andre Breton, Young’s poetry is full of wild leaps of illogic, extravagant imagery, and mercurial shifts in tone. Using surrealist techniques like collage, Young’s poems often blur the boundaries between reality and imagination, creating poetry that is enormously, almost disruptively, inclusive.

Ploughshares contributor Diann Blakely Shoaf remarked on how Young uses the "slightly cracked and wavy but nonetheless serviceable mirror of contemporary language" to comment on modern life, and concluded that Beloved Infidel is "a book that's a winner of hearts."