Shock by shock

Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In his first collection of all-new work written after his 2011 heart transplant, Young (Bender) appears at his most mordant, and most mortal. "The wolf appointed to tear me apart/ is sure making slow work of it," he writes to open the book, and in the poems that follow, Young retains his considerable charms: a generous, tragicomic spirit, a guileless love of rhyme, and an acrobatic sense of logic and image. In "Crash Test Dummies of an Imperfect God," the eponymous subjects rapidly transform from "dumpster" to "snow cone" to "genital-faced bivalve." But these poems, which invite readers into the quotidian aspects of the poet's life and reflect on his career, are also unusually meditative for Young, who is better known for pyrotechnics. "I'm ready for my close-up./ I'm ready for my far-away," he writes in "Ghost Gust," one of several poems that figure his post-op survival as a kind of afterlife. Not all of the poems hit their mark (indeed, one likens poets to "blind knife throwers"), and the collection hardly represents a major stylistic shift, but its twilit tenor does give it an extra heft. Even with a borrowed heart, Young has a remarkable capacity to remind us of the ticking of our own. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

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Review by Library Journal Review

As indicated by the poem "How I Got Through My Last Days on the Transplant List," Young, a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Elegy on Toy Piano, isn't dealing with everyday upsets. With his new heart in place, he offers a sometimes blackly witty look at the human condition. Absolutely not sentimental, Young can sound angry or restless, though it's less with his situation than with our suddenly highlighted stupidities ("No one believing you is a symptom// of telling the truth"). Refreshingly, he's not here to lecture us with a Hallmark life-is-wonderful message (just read "Crash-Test Dummies of an Imperfect God"). Instead, he clarifies that we often miss the point ("Only page 200 and already Breton's// finding it impossible to reconcile/ life to his dream. If only he could feel/ my old dog drinking from his cupped palms") and that assuming a point could be our big mistake ("If I had to pick between shadows/ and essences, I'd pick shadows"). VERDICT The final poem is titled "Believe in Magic?" and though the initial response is "How could I not?" in the end Young's a burning piece of paper, hanging in air, unreadable. That's where he leaves us in this energizing book, which takes chances and gives no answers.-Barbara Hoffert, -Library Journal © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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