Dean Young (poet)

Dean Young
at the 2013 National Bookfest
Born	1955 Columbia, Pennsylvania
Occupation	Poet
Nationality	United States
Notable awards	Pulitzer Prize finalist
Spouse	Laurie Saurborn; Cornelia Nixon

Dean Young (born 1955) is a contemporary American poet in the poetic lineage of John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, and Kenneth Koch. Often cited as a second-generation New York School poet, Young also derives influence and inspiration from the work of André Breton, Paul Éluard, and the other French Surrealist poets.

He was born in Columbia, Pennsylvania.

In 2008, Young became the William Livingston Chair of Poetry of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin.

His most recent books are Bender: New and Selected Poems,Fall Higher and The Art of Recklessness.

In an interview, Young said his poems are about misunderstanding and that tying meaning too closely with understanding is not the intent of his poetry. He finds the process of creation to be more important than the work itself, and that his poems are more demonstrations than explanations. He also finds that using mangled quotes from technical journals, as he experimented with in First Course in Turbulence, allows for a kind of collage in which tones confront each other. Citing Breton as a major influence, Young finds Surrealism useful in understanding the imagination and removing the boundaries between real and unreal.

He was awarded the Colorado Prize for Poetry for Strike Anywhere, has received a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, and has been awarded fellowships by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2002) as well as from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. His work has been included in The Best American Poetry anthology multiple times, dating back to 1993.

Elegy on Toy Piano (2005), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.