{"id":316,"date":"2012-11-15T21:37:47","date_gmt":"2012-11-16T03:37:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.joshlewis.org\/eddie\/?p=316"},"modified":"2012-11-19T04:09:07","modified_gmt":"2012-11-19T10:09:07","slug":"dean-young","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.joshlewis.org\/eddie\/2012\/11\/dean-young\/","title":{"rendered":"Dean Young twists it"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dean Young is a poet I often forget to mention when listing my favorite poets and for whom I later kick myself for forgetting. I love his stuff. His thoughts seem free associated, but it they keep revolving an idea like a fist that keeps materializing all around you getting closer and closer until it smacks you in the jaw. I can’t find it online, but the first poem I read by him is “Rabbit, I love you.” Here is an excerpt:<\/p>\n

The rabbit does not move, waiting<\/em><\/div>\n
for the yard to turn rabbit-colored<\/em><\/div>\n
and thus make it feel invisible. Huh?<\/em><\/div>\n
You can argue for hours about a rabbit<\/em><\/div>\n
if the feeling is there which is often<\/em><\/div>\n
not about the rabbit but the person<\/em><\/div>\n
you argue with, her hair tied<\/em><\/div>\n
to a river, her unstable tongue.<\/em><\/div>\n
Such heat in the world you<\/em><\/div>\n
and the rabbit share. And cold,<\/em><\/div>\n
demurs the glacier.<\/em><\/div>\n

<\/em>Also,<\/p>\n

Luciferin<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
“They won’t attack us here in the Indian graveyard.”<\/div>\n
I love that moment. And I love the moment<\/div>\n
when I climb into your warm you-smelling<\/div>\n
bed-dent after you’ve risen. And sunflowers,<\/div>\n
once a whole field and I almost crashed,<\/div>\n
the next year all pumpkins! Crop rotation,<\/div>\n
I love you. Dividing words between syl-<\/div>\n
lables! Dachshunds! What am I but the inter-<\/div>\n
section of these loves? I spend 35 dollars on a CD<\/div>\n
of some guy with 15 different guitars in his shack<\/div>\n
with lots of tape delays and loops, a good buy!<\/div>\n
Mexican animal crackers! But only to be identified<\/div>\n
by what you love is a malformation just as<\/div>\n
embryonic chickens grow very strange in zero<\/div>\n
gravity. I hate those experiments on animals,<\/div>\n
varnished bats, blinded rabbits, cows<\/div>\n
with windows in their flanks but obviously<\/div>\n
I’m fascinated. Perhaps it was my early exposure<\/div>\n
to Frankenstein. I love Frankenstein! Arrgh,<\/div>\n
he replies to everything, fire particularly<\/div>\n
sets him off, something the villagers quickly<\/div>\n
pick up. Fucking villagers. All their shouting’s<\/div>\n
making conversation impossible and now<\/div>\n
there’s grit in my lettuce which I hate<\/div>\n
but kinda like in clams as one bespeaks<\/div>\n
poor hygiene and the other the sea.<\/div>\n
I hate what we’re doing to the sea,<\/div>\n
dragging huge chains across the bottom,<\/div>\n
bleaching reefs. Either you’re a rubber\/<\/div>\n
gasoline salesman or like me, you’d like<\/div>\n
to duct tape the vice president’s mouth<\/div>\n
to the exhaust pipe of an SUV and I hate<\/div>\n
feeling like that. I would rather concentrate<\/div>\n
on the rapidity of your ideograms, how<\/div>\n
only a biochemical or two keeps me<\/div>\n
from becoming the world’s biggest lightning bug.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
……………………………..<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

There is something about the way he writes that makes me trust that if I sit and think long enough the spaces in between the ideas connect. And I do and they do. And then, I imagine, I experience what Young might have experienced writing it. It feels like when I’d come across an unexplored part of Baird Creek nature reserve as a kid and find several paths that stem out from that point. Some of them I know would bring me back to familiar places, but some head in a direction I’ve never been. So, I have options and will return for each, giving me a better picture of the whole. It reminds me that our experiences affect our experiences, old affecting new, of course, but also new affecting old. That we don’t build on where we’ve been but we add to the Rubik’s cube of our total accumulation of experiences. So depending on how we twist and rotate it there can be new realizations not only from what is just added, but also from what has been collecting dust.<\/p>\n

Dean Young twists it for me.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dean Young is a poet I often forget to mention when listing my favorite poets and for whom I later kick myself for forgetting. I love his stuff. His thoughts seem free associated, but it they keep revolving an idea like a fist that keeps materializing all around you getting closer and closer until it … Continue reading Dean Young twists it<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.joshlewis.org\/eddie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.joshlewis.org\/eddie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.joshlewis.org\/eddie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.joshlewis.org\/eddie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.joshlewis.org\/eddie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/blog.joshlewis.org\/eddie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":320,"href":"https:\/\/blog.joshlewis.org\/eddie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316\/revisions\/320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.joshlewis.org\/eddie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.joshlewis.org\/eddie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.joshlewis.org\/eddie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}