Dean Young
A few weeks ago I had a brief interaction with a Deputy Attorney General from the State Bureau of Environmental Justice. I spend my life reducing archaeological sites to words. Often, in the course of excavation, I destroy these sites, until nothing is left other than the labeled artifacts (that are sometimes then reburied), a stack of field notes, and whatever report I have written. Other times I describe and evaluate a site I know will be destroyed by construction, reducing it to words before it is removed.
Environmental lawyers inhabit a parallel world. They examine all the CEQA documents, including subject matter documents from all 19 elements on the CEQA checklist, not just the three I write for. (These days I think air quality is far more of an issue than my cultural studies, and she was far more interested in the biological resources check box than my discipline.) These attorneys make sure everything is in order and the proper words of power are used. They encounter fossils and archaeological sites and animals as abstractions -- words and punctuation marks. But they know more about the correct invocations than I and can conjure judges to do their will.
This particular attorney happened to be interested in the beauty as well as the power of words. She mentioned that she enjoyed modern poetry. I told her I used to read poetry, years and years ago, but didn't know anything about poetry today. She suggested I read First Course in Turbulence, by Dean Young. I don't know why she suggested that particular book over any others, but I did something unusual for me; rather then file the suggestion away intending at some point to follow through (but inevitably failing to do so), I puchased the book and then read it right away. It felt somewhat decadent, reading a book that has nothing to do with work, with short poems that nevertheless required significant time to understand and appreciate.
Young wrote First Course in Turbulence at a time when he was dying of cancer. Fortunately for him he recovered. In one poem Young says that melancholy is his favorite theme after eroticism. It was a somewhat ironic admission, since melancholy is by far the more prevalent theme in the book. One of the poems was called "Archeology," and does capture the way one can get pulled into a study and kept there long after one really even wants to do the work. Some of the book I felt I didn't really understand, and others made sense to me when I read that Young lifted phrases from textbooks (or made phrases appear to be taken from school books). I think I need to reread the book to better understand them. I doubt I'll ever fully grasp everything he was saying.
While I was waiting for the book to arrive I also found a video of Young reading from another volume, Bender: New and Selected Poems. I enjoyed his reading and might order that one next. One phrase caught my attention in the second poem he read, as I sat listening in my barren garden that I always intend to tend, "How many times must I drop bulbs into holes in the ground, and still not know how to be joyous?" I think I like the first poem best, though, about the hollow mood rings that appear happy, and the brief interaction with a noseringed cashier, a brief and almost meaningless exchange with a pretty woman and a purchased trinket that, for a time, really seemed to make him happy.
I hope I encounter that blue-eyed attorney again, but knowing how way leads on to way I doubt that I ever shall. "It's not easy turning into smoke, not easy blowing away."
Environmental lawyers inhabit a parallel world. They examine all the CEQA documents, including subject matter documents from all 19 elements on the CEQA checklist, not just the three I write for. (These days I think air quality is far more of an issue than my cultural studies, and she was far more interested in the biological resources check box than my discipline.) These attorneys make sure everything is in order and the proper words of power are used. They encounter fossils and archaeological sites and animals as abstractions -- words and punctuation marks. But they know more about the correct invocations than I and can conjure judges to do their will.
This particular attorney happened to be interested in the beauty as well as the power of words. She mentioned that she enjoyed modern poetry. I told her I used to read poetry, years and years ago, but didn't know anything about poetry today. She suggested I read First Course in Turbulence, by Dean Young. I don't know why she suggested that particular book over any others, but I did something unusual for me; rather then file the suggestion away intending at some point to follow through (but inevitably failing to do so), I puchased the book and then read it right away. It felt somewhat decadent, reading a book that has nothing to do with work, with short poems that nevertheless required significant time to understand and appreciate.
Young wrote First Course in Turbulence at a time when he was dying of cancer. Fortunately for him he recovered. In one poem Young says that melancholy is his favorite theme after eroticism. It was a somewhat ironic admission, since melancholy is by far the more prevalent theme in the book. One of the poems was called "Archeology," and does capture the way one can get pulled into a study and kept there long after one really even wants to do the work. Some of the book I felt I didn't really understand, and others made sense to me when I read that Young lifted phrases from textbooks (or made phrases appear to be taken from school books). I think I need to reread the book to better understand them. I doubt I'll ever fully grasp everything he was saying.
While I was waiting for the book to arrive I also found a video of Young reading from another volume, Bender: New and Selected Poems. I enjoyed his reading and might order that one next. One phrase caught my attention in the second poem he read, as I sat listening in my barren garden that I always intend to tend, "How many times must I drop bulbs into holes in the ground, and still not know how to be joyous?" I think I like the first poem best, though, about the hollow mood rings that appear happy, and the brief interaction with a noseringed cashier, a brief and almost meaningless exchange with a pretty woman and a purchased trinket that, for a time, really seemed to make him happy.
Click to viewI hope I encounter that blue-eyed attorney again, but knowing how way leads on to way I doubt that I ever shall. "It's not easy turning into smoke, not easy blowing away."