The Art Of Recklessness: Poetry As Assertive Force And Contradiction (2010) - Plot & Excerpts
This is blowing my mind once per page. Overall, it's about poetry, but Dean Young jumps around discussing topics as varied as: primitive art, dada, Gertrude Stein, Rimbaud, otherness, sex, craft, Ezra Pound, disruption, Picasso... in a way that makes it easy to understand the connection between those things. For instance, I'd never considered how WWI led to Dada which led to Surrealism. This book contains the most insightful explanation of Surrealism that I've read. It's obvious that Young is really excited about this content; his analyses are often poetic themselves. The poems he cites by Hass, Wordsworth, Keats, Breton, Carlos Williams, Baraka, among others, are the bomb. My reading list probably doubled while reading this. 3.5Young just had to prove his point. He was probably drunk and drugged the whole way through, his reckless writing increasingly irritating, which was perhaps the point. I dunno. I wanted to like this guy, this book because of his first and last few pages, which were manic yes, but more focused, which proved that he could. But there was just too much Surrealism, too much Dada, and too much nonsense in the middle that the incredible parts were almost not worth it.
What do You think about The Art Of Recklessness: Poetry As Assertive Force And Contradiction (2010)?
I liked this! It made me feel good about trying hard!
—Manastka
