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Poetry that eloquently explores of mortality and survival.
“These poems, by turn celebratory and elegiac, reveal a world-made-language as Mr. Young, the most delicate of alchemists, examines the raw elements of self and imagination”—David St. John
“The landscapes in David Young’s poems—drawn from Ireland, England, Vermont, California, and Ohio—have the vividness of places that rise up in dreams. The ordinary is haunted by the miraculous.”—Nancy Willard
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DAVID YOUNG journeys from his front porch halfway across the globe and back to his Ohio home in the circuit marked by Foraging. His emphasis is on our mortality and survival; ghosts and mushrooms (hence the title) are central poetic images; wild mushrooms of an odd beauty—variegated, unpredictable, delicious, poisonous, hallucinogenic—taking their life from decay, recyclers of matter, rather as poets are. He sees nature as a haunted house, and as a presence whose meaning fascinates and eludes us. Some of his poems are spoken by ghosts, others addressed to ghosts—for example, the elegy for James Wright, which invites his spirit to return to his native Ohio.
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