Dean Young

GalleyCat called our attention to the fact that the poet Dean Young is in desperate need of a heart transplant and his friends and friends of poetry are asking for donations to help with his tremendous medical bills. From his webpage at The National Foundation for Transplants:

If you are reading this, you are probably a friend of Dean Young and/or a friend of poetry. And you may have heard that our friend is in a precarious position. Dean needs a heart transplant now. He also needs your assistance now….He is in and out of the hospital, unable to breathe without discomfort, etc. Currently, Dean’s heart is pumping at an estimated 8% of normal volume….If you know Dean, you know that his non-anatomical heart, though hardly normal, is not malfunctioning, but great in scope, affectionate and loyal. And you know that his poetry is what the Elizabethans would have called “one of the ornaments of our era.”

Here is the beginning of one of Dean’s poems, “Undertow,” at The Poetry Foundation. (You can read the rest of the poem and others, here.)

People looking at the sea,

makes them feel less terrible about themselves,

the sea’s behaving abominably,

seems never satisfied,

what it throws away it dashes down

then wants back, yanks back.

Comparatively, thinks one vice president,

what are my frauds but nudged along

misunderstandings already there?

I can’t believe I ever worried

about my betrayals, thinks the analyst

benefitting facially from the sea’s raged-up mist.

Obviously I’m not the only one suffering

an identity crisis knows the boy

who wants to be a lawyer no more.

Nothing can stay long, cogitates the dog,

so maybe a life of fetch is not a wasted life.

And the sea heaves and cleaves and seethes,

shoots snot out, goes to bed only to wake

shouting in the mansion of the night, pacing,

pacing, making tea then spilling it…