The Second Person

Employing the careful emotion of Constantine Cavafy and the realism lying beneath Oscar Wilde's comic epigrams, he has crafted a contemplative book of poems both wise and willing to learn. Drawing on traditional forms including the villanelle and pantoum, and writing with an ear for a beautiful, resounding rhythm, C. Dale Young investigates the lessons of the trainee doctor and documents the experiences of the practicing physician, remarking on the ways medicine alone is not enough: "Do not let a man // abandon hope," says Saint Luke. And, as with the remarkable long sequence, "Triptych at the Edge of Sight," these are also poems of intimacy, depicting with rich color and poignant contemplation the way art struggles to "capture [. . .] on canvas. / Memory, do not fail me. Let me try again."

C. DALE YOUNG practices medicine, serves as Poetry Editor of New England Review, and teaches in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program. He is the author of The Day Underneath the Day, which was a finalist for the 2002 Norma Farber Award given by the Poetry Society of America, and Torn, a limited-edition, fine letterpress broadside. He is a previous winner of the Grolier Prize, the Tennessee Williams Scholarship in Poetry from the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and the 2003 Stanley P. Young Fellowship in Poetry from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. His poems have appeared in many anthologies and magazines, including The Best American Poetry, Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation, The New Republic, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and Poetry. He lives in San Francisco with the biologist and composer, Jacob Bertrand.