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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.

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Changing Genres

by Dean Young
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I was satisfied with haiku until I met you,
jar of octopus, cuckoo’s cry, 5-7-5,
but now I want a Russian novel,
a 50-page description of you sleeping,
another 75 of what you think staring out
a window. I don’t care about the plot

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  • A really great poem with a fascinating turn....
  • Wonderfully witty and touching. And doesn't it make a novelist wish...

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