Elegy on Toy Piano

Wisconsin Bookwatch, May, 2005

Elegy On Toy Piano

Dean Young

University of Pittsburgh Press

3400 Forbes Avenue, 5th floor, Pittsburgh, PA 15260

0822958724 $12.95 1-800-666-2211

Elegy On Toy Piano is the sixth collection of poetry from Lenore Marshall Prize finalist Dean Young. The brief, free-verse wordplay mourns the tragedies of life, from the loss of a beloved family pet to the end of a lovers' relationship, but also stretches beyond grief to portray a wide range of mixed of emotions, acknowledging the bad with the good. A serious-minded reflection on the mysteries of life, death, and everything in between. Elegy on Toy Piano: You don't need a pony / to connect you to the unseeable / or an airplane to connect you to the sky. // Necessary it is to die / if you are a living thing / which you have no choice about. // Necessary it is to love to live / and there are many manuals / but in all important ways / one is on one's own. // You need not cut off your hand. / No need to eat a bouquet. / Your head becomes a peach pit / Your tongue a honeycomb. // Necessary it is to live to love, / to charge into the burning tower / then charge back out / and necessary it is to die. / Even for the grass, even for the pony / connecting you to what can't be grasped. // The injured gazelle falls behind the / herd. One last wild enjambment. // Because of the sores in his mouth, / the great poet struggles with a dumpling. / His work has enlarged the world / but the world is about to stop including him. / He is the tower the world runs out of. // When something becomes ash, / there's nothing you can do to turn it back. / About this, even diamonds do not lie.