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.

Demonic Possession Is 9/10 of the Law

by Dean Young

What’s in cryostasis
should stay in cryostasis.

Do not core-sample the frozen alien.


If the landlord tells you
not to hang a mirror in that room,
do not hang a mirror in that room.


Do not jump off a train in the Carpathians
to investigate a castle ruin.


A stake through the heart
is only half of it.


All flowers eat meat.


Put no faith in a sequel.


The ultimate monster is always the self.


From Solar Perplexus (Copper Canyon Press, 2019).


Read on . . .

“Changing Genres,” a poem by Dean Young