Thursday, March 13, 2008

Embryoyo

Okay, I know I've blogged about Dean Young before (and this is turning into a little bit of a poetry obsessed week on 2x3x7), but I've been reading his 2007 collection Embryoyo and laughing myself silly with sheer delight, so I felt I had to share.

You can find poems from the collection here, here, here , here, here and here.

And here's one that you can't find online:

Bunny Tract

Primarily by zigzags like a poem,
bunny moves. Out of base material,
grass is arranged. Certainly, bunny
has much figured out. Quickly, it converts
fear of death, starvation, boredom
into giddy-up, part Chinese checker,
part quantum which is here or there
but never in between. Cherished
by Plains Indians was bunny's power
to disappear by holding very still.
The ancient poet wakes, a bit hungover,
footprints of his friend in new snow
going down the hill, bunny dances
on the edge of the abyss. A cactus
has less in common with static
than a thistle with a kestrel. Baseball
is full of superstition because
it's surrounded by infinity, played
on a diamond formed by multiples of three.
Full of funny hops, bunny twitches,
procreates, kept alive by a curious,
somewhat gross digestive practice
and, perhaps in recompense, excessive
cuteness except for cousin jackrabbit
who looks like those late photos
of Artaud. To give a jackrabbit shock
therapy would be redundant though
Bunny glimpsed by headlight: sailor's
delight; bunny in the morning red:
might as well stay in bed. Bunny
munches its radish leaves without irony.
Without irony, bunny dashes down the hole.
A sense of incongruity, feigned ignorance,
or the doubleness of being one place
but feeling you are another is solely
a human blessing / curse, an aid perhaps
in traffic jams but much worse trying
to embrace a lover and feeling stuck again
in the third-grade cloakroom, whiffs of glue.
It is times like these it seems bunny
knows exactly what to do, flee then stop
and disappear but friend, our work is dark
in a darker world of not leaping in the sun
much. Nerves live in the wormwood.
Every canoe is a sad canoe. Bunny
hops in the vetch but whatever holds us
in its mouth hasn't decided yet to bite
or drop us in a fluffier nest.

- Dean Young

4 comments:

Space Bar said...

I love the title of the collection. And talking about bunnies...

Anonymous said...

I am discovering all this poetry I like because of you. Thank you. (Linking all the ones that gave me goosebumps).

Banno said...

For a poetry challenged person like me, space bar's and your posts on poetry always give something new.

Falstaff said...

SB: Ah, yes, the suicidal bunnies. I love those guys.

sonia: you're welcome.

banno: That, of course, is the point. And I don't know what you mean by poetry challenged. As Marianne Moore puts it:

"if you demand on the one hand
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, you are interested in poetry."