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A review by toniclark
The Art of Recklessness: Poetry as Assertive Force and Contradiction by Dean Young
5.0
Not a quick or an easy read. Not a craft book — more of an anti-craft book. I've gotten lost more than once. Another reviewer said dense, passionate, and reckless. I concur. It's a book to go back to again and again, is maybe best taken in small doses. Read a little. Think. Then maybe, think again.
It's a lot about opening up, disrupting expectations, being a little crazy, goofy, unruly. It's about accessing the primitive, the primary ground. In Young's words, "Let us get better at not knowing what we’re doing."
This book is so packed full, I can't do it justice. Almost every sentence is something you want to stop and reread.
"I believe in the divinity of profligacy," he says.
"Poets are excellent students of blizzards and salt and broken statuary, but they are always somewhere else for the test."
Good advice to the Poetry Elite (I won't name names): "Poetry can’t be harmed by people trying to write it!"
"The emphasis on craft, on a series of procedures and techniques, is too much like the creation of perfectly safe nuclear reactors without acknowledging the necessity of radioactive matter for the core."
"When art strives for the decorums of craft, it withers to table manners during a famine."
It's a lot about opening up, disrupting expectations, being a little crazy, goofy, unruly. It's about accessing the primitive, the primary ground. In Young's words, "Let us get better at not knowing what we’re doing."
This book is so packed full, I can't do it justice. Almost every sentence is something you want to stop and reread.
"I believe in the divinity of profligacy," he says.
"Poets are excellent students of blizzards and salt and broken statuary, but they are always somewhere else for the test."
Good advice to the Poetry Elite (I won't name names): "Poetry can’t be harmed by people trying to write it!"
"The emphasis on craft, on a series of procedures and techniques, is too much like the creation of perfectly safe nuclear reactors without acknowledging the necessity of radioactive matter for the core."
"When art strives for the decorums of craft, it withers to table manners during a famine."