A certain slant lubricates the vision of Brian Young’s second book of poems
Lines of verse veer top-speed around corners, producing unexpectedly lucid interrogations: “The sun,/ Then, in a brief// Case blown open,/ Appears. But who is/ Here to have it,/ 2Bang4? . . .” Anger is allowed in these poems, and disillusionment, and a general mistrust of “landscape”—the natural world owned and used—all countered with the anodyne of an inebriate sensibility that loves the liquor in which it bathes, the language by which it collaborates. “I can co-locate here./ I won’t digress, not with these/ Metal parts in the desert wind/ Not with a bank of clouds/ Stored on film.”
Endorsements:
"In Brian Young's new book, ‘wolving brainwork’ cuts a jagged swath through the presumptions of the republic. Coming as they do from the perspective of an implicated speaker, the political swipes avoid any hint of preaching or self-pity. In fact, true vision intervenes quite often, transporting the reader momentarily—and more forcefully, therefore—out of the more or less hellish existence that is, however, to a great extent itself the result of just how clearly this poet sees what's really happening. These brilliantly sounded poems swallow-tail, then snake. We're held, leaning forward in our seats."—Elizabeth Arnold
"Brian Young's poems are not only about change but in their subtle psychology they enact and cause change. An earlier book allowed that ‘the filthy river / carries a truth we could never / have dreamed.’ In this newest book, the promise and the threat of such change are even more dramatically present: ‘The things you are about to name always / Give way to a gradual dissolving anyway.’ Site Acquisition is about dissolving and reassembling, but never about resembling: it does not recognize because the change it works with will not allow for any sort of reflection. There is devastating beauty in such fierce looking."—Bin Ramke
From the Book:
Intersection
Naturally, it took over, taking all
To an unforgiving correction, that psalm
In which nothing floats, even the eye
That has tried and tried to give back
A bloodless dawn. If it was able
To open, it would upon a psychosis
That takes to the field, sends out
A secondary impulse both measured
And sequential. It would put the lens
Into the pill, upon the pulse.
Everyone was already waiting
Wirelessly anyway. Just sign
The lease, okay? Then you will go
To sleep for days, in colored rocks,
And awake as someone else entirely,
With cool, clear water flowing by.
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BRIAN YOUNG’s first book of poems was The Full Night in the Street Water (2003). He lives near St. Louis, Missouri.
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