Primitive Mentor

Dean Young is the master of the "American Surreal" school of poetry. This latest volume is a fine addition to his oeuvre. Poems like "Look at Quintillions Ripen'd & Look at Quintillions Green," "Poem on a Theme by Tony Hoagland" (a friend of Young's and another poet of high comic intent worth checking out), "Pelt" (a political poem if there ever was one), and "The Pure Intention of the Hornet," will only add to the admiration that Young has garnered through the past decade for his humorous and humane poetry.

“Dean Young's poems are as entertaining as a three-ring circus and as imaginative as a canvas by Hieronymous Bosch. He is one of the most inventive and satisfying poets writing today.”
—American Academy of Arts and Letters

“Now nine books into his repertoire, Dean Young risks a number of easy criticisms. One of these is that his poems are simply permutations of themselves, that each maps the same territory as the last. Another more conspicuous concern is its extremity. Unabashedly surreal, his imagery and his narrative  impulses can be dismissed as wacky and superfluous. More than any of his past books, ‘Primitive Mentor’ squelches these concerns.”
—Coldfront Magazine

“In Young’s work, the big essential questions--mortality, identity, the meaning of life--aren’t simply food for thought; they’re grounds for entertainment.”
—The Sunday Star (Ontario, Canada)

Dean Young has published eight previous books, most recently elegy on toy piano, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Embryoyo. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts as well as an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He teaches in the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Distributor: Chicago Distribution Center
Publication Date: 01-28-2008
Pages: 80
Measurements: 9.00in X 6.00in X 0.30in