What I'm Reading Right This Minute

Just received: Brent Terry's revised manuscript, Wicked, Excellently.

Only into page 3 -- first question, does beginning the manuscript with a Dean Young quotation and placing a poem second in order with the lines, "What I thought was a heart attack was only/one of Dean Young's trees sprouting from my chest" and "Things were never the same after Hendrix -- after Dean Young" come off as reverence for an admired contemporary poet or kind of groupie-ish? It's easy to honor the dead this way, death brings mythic proportions. Hendrix=God. People won't argue with that. But are we supposed to honor souls still living in flesh this way? Aren't we supposed to ignore the living and focus on what we missed out on, the things we can never touch or change? I'm aware of how fucked up this sounds, I'm trying to figure out why I grimace when Brent serves up these kinds of pieces. I like Dean Young's work a lot. I wrote a poem called "Death of the Junkies" in response to his "Lives of the Inventors." It doesn't appear that I have a problem with inspiration or influence by the living. So what's my deal?

In December, after getting one of these poems, I gave Brent an assignment. I said, "I want you to kick Dean Young in the balls in your next poem. It doesn't have to be literally, but why don't you pretend that you're a Gemini and turn on him, stab him in the back, mock him, toss some feces at him. You've put him too high up on the pedestal. Knock him off. You can revert back to your usual status after the assignment, but I think it might be a useful exercise. The man is too young and too alive to be receiving so many homages! Pretend he's [name deleted of some poor young writer who was built up by critics just so they could tear him down] and go snarky on his ass. Break free of your Dean love affair. You can always go back."

Brent never wrote that poem, if he did, he never shared it with me.

On a practical note, I worry this tribute might be off-putting to editors or first round readers, but that's probably not the kind of reading I should be giving my friend's manuscript, or is it? Brent has every intention of finding a publisher for it. Am I the only one with the "wait 'til he's dead before painting that mural" view of the world?

I'll go back to reading now.

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