That's What I Thought: Poems

by Gary Young

Winner of the 2017 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award, a moving and playful new collection by a master of the prose poem . Gary Young builds on his remarkable oeuvre with this heartening volume, his seventh. His new poems, full of the pleasures and concerns of everyday life, brim with subtle wit and wisdom. Set implicitly along the coastal landscape of northern California, Young’s longtime home, they are latest achievements of a poet renown for “the capturing of small, daily miracles” (Dorianne Laux) in his masterful prose poems.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

Published September 25, 2018

About the author

Gary Young is a poet, artist, printer, and educator. His numerous awards include recognition from the Poetry Society of America—the 2013 Lucille Medwick Memorial Award (2013), the Shelley Memorial Award (2009), the William Carlos Williams Award (2003), and the Lyric Poem Award (2001). Gary has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities, and his print work is represented in the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Getty Center for the Arts, and special collection libraries throughout the country. He teaches Creative Writing, and is the Director of the Cowell Press at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Reviews

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although I sit here not fundamentally changed in any way by this book, I find myself very content having read it. There were a handful of poems that struck me less powerfully, but the majority of them managed to bring a whole memory to life in a few spare sentences. Among the most touching were A robin calls out from the redwoods, The whale's tooth, The farmhouse, and From the vineyard. The evoked images alone are particularly beautiful, but the subtle humor and thoughtfulness are where the collection of these works shines.