SolarPerplexus Format: Hardback

In Solar Perplexus, Dean Young uses the surreal as the thread which weaves in and out of complications of existence. The result is a textured, honest work that grapples with what it means to love, lose, and hang in the afterward. Suddenly the boundaries of our everyday are shaken―and yet instead of being thrown off balance, our understanding is cracked open. Young holds us between un/reality, tracing the circle of life and death, and exposing the true closeness between extremes. It is this true intimacy that both unsettles and comforts. Solar Perplexus turns identity on its head as it questions self (against) control, with each eerily familiar moment of humor punctuated with an inevitable doubt.

Dean Young is the author of seventeen books of poetry and poetic theory. His iconic, comedic style is derived from the New York School of Poetry and from contemporary art movements like Surrealism and Dadaism. In an interview with the University of Arizona Poetry Center, Young said, “For me the human drama, the squishy, time-limited pulse, is always at the center of the poem.” His book Elegy on Toy Piano was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2006, and his work has been celebrated with the Academy Award in Literature and the Colorado Prize for Poetry. Dean Young served as the Texas Poet Laurate and has received multiple fellowships, including the National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship, the Stegner Fellowship, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. He currently holds the position of William Livingston Chair of Poetry at the University of Texas, Austin.