Matt Hart and Dean Young are exemplary surrealist poets.
They incorporate automatic methods, chance operations,
appropriation, and other surrealist means
in the making of poems.
And like many surrealist visual artists,
their works often take pleasure in whimsy
around the corner into ache, a sadness,
a sometimes momentary crystalline song.
Unlike their visual counterparts,
Dean and Matt use language--
a tool meant for meaning--
to break us out of our usual patterns of understanding.
This is an onerous task for any poet,
but particularly those for whom meaning itself is suspect.
Some poets destroy the meaning making components of language
in order to rid it of deception.
Our poets tonight have found another way
to choke out deception through active reception that
is imagination.
"It is the art of thwarting the merely random,"
Matt writes in a 2001 essay on collage.
In a 2003 lecture on surrealism, Young
says, "We are so alienated from our imagination.
All we are aware of is--" and there's a break in the page
there--
a jump in the audio.
And all of a sudden, all we are aware of
is an unanswerable mystery--
a technical blip, information the gods never
intended us to have--
[LAUGHTER]
All I can say that is that imagination scrambles
into [INAUDIBLE] atoning.
Our poets, no doubt, can do better than anagrams.
Tonight we'll hear first from Matt Hart, editor
of Forklift Ohio, a journal of poetry,
cooking, and light industrial safety.
[LAUGHTER]
Forklift Ohio, the new issue is for sale
out in the lobby, as is Matt's released chapbook, Revelated,
and a CD from his band, Travel.
All of which are for sale for $10.
And all of Dean Young's books also
available for sale courtesy of Barnes and Noble.
But back to Matt--
he's also the author of the forthcoming
Who's Who Vivid from Slope Editions.
And as I mentioned, the just released Revelated.
After that, Dean Young, author of six well-loved collections
of poetry, most recently Elegy on Toy Piano, will read.
He's also the author of Skid, Strike Anywhere,
and the recently re-released Beloved Infidel.
He teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the Warren Wilson
Program for Writers.