The Poetry Society of America's Benefit for Dean Young

Great video of the Dean Young reading over on Coldfront.

Monday, Here We Are

I'm excited to say there will be a new issue of Sink Review out later this month & it will feature all kinds of awesomness including poems by Kim Gek Lin Short who you can read an interview with over at Bookslut.

Today's entry on Montevidayo is a good read as well. Take a look at this excerpt:

My point with the entry was to show how this anxiety about translation comes out of an anxiety to maintain “mastery” – mastery over language (hierarchical, centripedal) and literature – for example Ron’s reductive model of “Quietism vs Post-Avant,” leading in a fiercely chronological “modernist” path from Pound to Objectivism to Ron himself.

Read the entire posting here.

There's a Dean Young reading this Thursday at 7pm in NYC. Details here.
(Thanks to Lily Ladewig for the low-down).

I'm reading in Philly on Saturday (Jan. 22nd) with two of my favorite poets: Sampson Starkweather & Paige Taggart. If you haven't read Sam's latest two chapbooks give yourself a gift that keeps giving & get them immediately. Paige has a new chapbook forthcoming, but to hold you over, just google her. Every poem I read of hers lately is completely stunning.

Dean Young Needs Our Help

Reprinted via Coldfront Magazine:
Dean Young is in desperate need of a heart transplant, according to an open letter from Tony Hoagland that has been published by The National Foundation for Transplants.

“…Our friend is in a precarious position. Dean needs a heart transplant now. He also needs your assistance now,” Hoagland writes.

According to the letter, Young is expected to have “enormous bills not covered by insurance.” Interested parties can donate by clicking here.

Here is Hoagland’s entire letter:

Dear Friends,

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.

Over the past 10 or 15 years, Dean has lived with a degenerative heart condition–congestive heart failure due to idiopathic hypotropic cardiomyopathy. After periods of more-or-less remission, in which his heart was stabilized and improved with the help of medications, the function of his heart has worsened. Now, radically.

For the last two years he has had periods in which he cannot walk a block without resting. Medications which once worked have lost their efficacy. 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.

In the past, doctors have been impressed with his ability to function in this condition. But now things are getting quickly worse. Dean has been placed on the transplant list at Seton Medical Center Austin, and has just been upgraded to a very critical category. He’s got to get a heart soon, or go to intermediate drastic measures like a mechanical external pump.

Whatever the scenario, the financial expenses, both direct and collateral, will be massive. Yes, he has sound health insurance, but even so, he will have enormous bills not covered by insurance–which is where you can help, with your financial support.

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”–hilarious, heartbreaking, courageous, brilliant and already a part of the American canon.

His 10-plus books, his long career of passionate and brilliant teaching, most recently as William Livingston Chair of Poetry at the University of Texas at Austin; his instruction and mentorship of hundreds of younger poets; his many friendships; his high, reckless and uncompromised vision of what art is: all these are reasons for us to gather together now in his defense and support.

Joe Di Prisco, one of Dean’s oldest friends, is chairing a fundraising campaign conducted through the National Foundation for Transplants (NFT). NFT is a nonprofit organization that has been assisting transplant patients with advocacy and fundraising support since 1983.

If you have any questions about NFT, feel free to contact the staff at 800-489-3863. You may also contact Joe personally at jdiprisco@earthlink.net.

On behalf of Dean, myself, and the principle of all our friendships in art, I ask you to give all you can. Thanks, my friends.

Yours,

Tony Hoagland