Fall Higher

In his13th book, Young (Primitive Mentor) confronts mortality and the frailty of relationships with his trademark humor and inventiveness, but also with a newfound vulnerability and urgency. "We all feel/ suspended over a drop into nothingness," he writes in "Scarecrow on Fire," which ends "This is my soul, freed." These poems swing between those poles of fear and hope. A poem made of lines that resemble fortune cookie fortunes attests that life wears us away while it sustains us, advising, "Your feelings will never change, you'll just stop paying so much attention" and "The same laughter will have to work the rest of your life." Elsewhere, death is figured as a catalyst for life: "Because they will die soon/ the young couple has another baby." Self-loathing abounds in poems that ask questions like "What blank is yours to fill in/ regarding the worm's intestines?" In one section, a relationship ends ("suddenly I know I'll be an awful/ dim and recognizable character in my ex-wife's next novel") and in the next, another begins ("now I want a Russian novel, a 50-page description of you sleeping"). Overseeing all of it is the awareness that hope emerges in unlikely ways: "Just because we have birds inside us, we don't have to be cages." (Apr.)