Dean Young is the author of five books of poetry--
Design With X, Beloved Infidel, Strike Anywhere, First Course
in Turbulence, and Skid.
He was a student of nursing at Indiana University for a year
after he received his MFA.
He has been a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center,
a Stegner fellow at Stanford University,
and has received two fellowships from the National
Endowment for the Arts.
Not to mention, this evening, I'd
like to offer him the Jolly Good Fellowship here at the Poetry
Center.
It comes with neither cash nor prestige,
but it's undeniable among everybody.
And what else about Dean Young?
He's on the faculty of both the Iowa Writers'
Workshop and the Warren Wilson Program for Writers.
He lives with his wife, novelist Cornelia Nixon, and their cat,
Keats, in Berkeley, California.
Dean Young, oft considered the wiliest of poets,
is an irreverent reverend of the art, a master of whimsy who
will wham you with momentary ontological clarity,
and then deny it was ever there.
He's both a skeptic--
I'm quoting, "I'll believe nothing
that comes from any mouth, not mine, not yours."
And he's also a frustrated seeker of definitive meaning.
Quote again, "even the context won't
tell the difference between tear and tear."
It is in the periphery of a sidelong glance,
that Young gets at what might be called prescient vision
or higher truth.
These momentary recognitions, deeply felt,
quickly drift back into the fray of life and mind,
the only depths from which they might again be born.
In the words of John Milton, "A reverend sire among them came."
Please welcome Dean Young.
[APPLAUSE]