Dean Young (1955–2022) published numerous poetry collections, including Fall Higher, Bender: New and Selected Poems, and Solar Perplexus. He also wrote a book on poetics, The Art of Recklessness: Poetry as Assertive Force and Contradiction. The recipient of an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Young was the William Livingston Chair of Poetry at the University of Texas at Austin.

Photograph by Matt Valentine.

Delphiniums in a Window Box

by Dean Young

Every sunrise, sometimes strangers’ eyes.
Not necessarily swans, even crows,
even the evening fusillade of bats.
That place where the creek goes underground,
how many weeks before I see you again?
Stacks of books, every page, character’s
rage and poet’s strange contraption
of syntax and song, every song
even when there isn’t one.

People on couch
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