Bender

"Young's Bender is a book of survival and strength, of seeing even in the smallest things the heights of what we can be. That's as good a definition of contemporary poetry as any."--NPR

"This book reads like a long, breathless thank you for life's seemingly random jumble of beauty, strangeness, tenderness, and joy."--Los Angeles Times

"The reader's mind shoots through Young's poems] like the steel ball in a pinball machine, dinging around, racking up points. Dean's poems are amazingly fun."--BOMB

Bender gathers the abundant treasure from Dean Young's twelve volumes. Strongly influenced by Surrealism, Young's poems flash with extravagant imagery, humorous speech, sly views of the quotidian, mercurial hip-shake shifts, and exposed nerves of heartache.

From "Commencement Address":

I love you for shattering.

Someone has to. Just as someone

has to announce inadvertently

the end of grief or spring's

splurge even as the bureaucrat's

spittoon overflows. Someone has to come out

the other end of the labyrinth

saying, What's the big deal?

Someone has to spend all day staring

at the data from outer space

or separating the receipts

or changing the sheets in sour room after room.

I like it when the end of the toilet paper

is folded into a point.

I like napkins folded into swans

because I like wiping my mouth on swans...

Dean Young has published twelve books of poetry, including finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and Griffin Award. He teaches at the University of Texas and lives in Austin.