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The Sound of Dreams
Remembered Like poets across the ages, Young is grounded and experienced in the pride and prejudice of his own times, and yet he can jump right over the moon and straight at the sun. Whether sonnetizing love or loss, laughing at smug social presumptions, condemning CIA drug deals, the thriving prison industry, biotech food, greed in a darkening stockocracy, or celebrating eternal verities, he writes with spirit, imagination, and hope. "The pace of these poems is fast, jazzy, propelling the reader along with supple, often conversational rhythms, lively description and rushes of feeling." -Library Journal "Imbued with serious passions and wonders, topical alertness, humor, and lushness of language and mind, Al Young's poems are voracious for this world, in all its possibilities and parts. His syncopated heart spills out wisdom won by a hard and joyous attention: 'The loveliness of poems is that they keep;/the loveliness of lives is that they don't.' In the music, clarity, and poignance of such perception, these poems are set down for the keeping." -Jane Hirshfield "Al Young's The Sound of Dreams Remembered invites readers to travel the depth and breadth of his bountiful imagination. There is a deep singing inside of Al Young's poetry, with a hint of Ocean Springs beneath a distilled signifying in the hands of a master code switcher. This seasoned voice knows the music and folklore, the history and lingo, and each poem, with an almost sacred sincerity, takes us multiple directions in a single breath." -Yusef Komunyakaa Creative Arts Book Company |
Al Young The author of several books of poetry, Al Young is also a novelist and essayist. He is the recipient of NEA, Guggenheim, and Fulbright Fellowships as well as the PEN/Library of Congress Award for Short Fiction and the PEN/USA Award for Non-Fiction. He has taught at Stanford, Rice, the University of Arkansas, UC Santa Cruz, the University of Washington, and the University of Michigan.
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