Black LabDavid Young, the distinguished poet and translator, offers us a gorgeous cycle of poems attuned to the Midwestern seasons—to weather both emotional and actual. A writer of thrilling invention and humanity, Young beckons the reader into an effortless proximity with the fox at the field’s edge, with the chattering crow and the startling first daffodils of spring. In his tour of both exterior and interior landscapes, the poet scatters his father’s ashes and remembers losing his wife, Chloe, to cancer, a loss at times still fresh after several decades; pays homage to the wisdom of the Chinese masters whose aesthetic has helped shape his own; and reflects on the gladdening qualities of a walk in a snowstorm with his black labrador, Nemo: and in this snowfall that I should detest, late March and early April, I’m still rapt to see his coat so constellated, starred, re-starred, making a comic cosmos I can love. Young’s expert shaping of this world in which, as he writes, “We’re never going to get God right. But we / learn to love all our failures on the way,” becomes for the reader a fresh experience of life’s mysterious goodness and of the abundant pleasure of the language that embodies it. |
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Black lab
User Review - Not Available - Book VerdictIn his tenth volume, Ohio poet Young (English, Oberlin Coll.) works in a variety of forms and styles, each of them well crafted, though the less traditional ones aren't as accessible and will likely ... Read full review
Contents
Blakes Dante and Virgil Penetrating the Forest 1824 | 25 |
Wear My Father | 38 |
Five Poems of Old Age | 53 |
Copyright | |
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Common terms and phrases
appeared in Meridian AUGUST IN OHIO back and neck beauty Billy cut BLACK LAB BLACK LABRADOR blue snow Bo Juyi burned Carlos German Belli Celan CEMETERY AT SPRINGVILLE Chinese poets climbed clouds coat Comets cut the mountain cut the sun Dante dark David Young dawn DISCUS DOCTOR'S HISTORY dream dusk dust EATING A RED ECLIPSE GNOSTIC HYMN Eugenio Montale face FATHER'S ASHES Faux feel FIVE POEMS forest Genoa glow Here's JOHN SEARLE Judy Karasik lemon yellow Little Bighorn look LUNAR ECLIPSE GNOSTIC Margaret Young memories Miroslav miss you already MOVING STATUE night Oberlin College OHIO AND CAPOLONGO OVID PETRARCH WATCHES Plato POEMS OF OLD Poetry PUTTING MY FATHER'S rain RED HAVEN PEACH RETIRED IN OHIO Sabon Sally cut Secret shine sleep smile starred stroll Swithin things thyself tiny trees VAUCLUSE VILLANELLE Virgil WALKING AROUND RETIRED WATCHES THE MOON Winter Solstice YOSHITOSHI younger zodiacal light
Bibliographic information
| Title | Black Lab |
| Author | David Young |
| Publisher | Knopf, 2006 |
| Original from | the University of Michigan |
| Digitized | May 30, 2008 |
| ISBN | 0307263223, 9780307263223 |
| Length | 68 pages |
| Subjects | › › Poetry / American / General |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |