by David Young
Knopf 2006
Reviewed by Melinda Wilson

Days Constellated with Light

David Young’s tenth book of poetry, Black Lab, is largely concerned with growing old; however, this concern is not typical of the “fear of death” theme that dominates much poetry. It is not despondent or begrudging, but spirited and celebratory, indulging in the sweetness of a slower phase of life.

The opening poem, “Walking Around Retired in Ohio,” establishes the mood. It is full of O’Hara-like exuberance for a world that is suddenly new to the speaker, who wakes early despite having nowhere to be, wakes early simply for “the great big day, the new one.” It seems the day is “great” and “big” merely because it is “new.”

The poet’s dog Nemo shares his spirited attitude in “Black Labrador.” The lab is described as “wherein mad scientists/ concoct excessive energy,” an obvious play on words. The speaker toys with the fact that “dog” is “God” spelled backwards and refers to his dog as his “Nemo-omen.” The anagrams are clever but not too clever, and even more impressive is the speaker’s ability to live with the energy and zeal of a Black Labrador. In a spring snowstorm:

…I’m still rapt

to see his coat so constellated, starred, re-starred,

making a comic cosmos I can love.

In these poems it seems that even issues typically worth hostility are given little time for grievance. “Eating a Red Haven Peach in the Middle of August in Ohio” details the speaker thinking about disturbing political issues: “the little daily shit storm, constant rain of lies.” Momentarily the poem gets heated and it seems that these issues are stronger than the poem is built to handle with lines like “the President’s moral hairspray.” However, it quickly returns to its former lightheartedness and ends beautifully; the speaker addresses Eve in paradise and says that despite “the fall,” the peach he is eating has sent him “back there for a moment.”

In “Lunar Eclipse Gnostic Hymn” Young demonstrates his ability to represent the common in an atypical manner. The subject of this poem is an eclipse, a long clichéd topic in poetry, but Young manages to refresh the scene for us: “the moon-round blushing like a bride,/ newly naked before her groom.” We can visualize the bride’s misty veil, her clouded train, without the speaker mentioning them. Young has made the moon a “stone maiden of a billion years,” beautiful and startling all over again.

Young often recasts ordinary objects and ideas. “Leaves stop talking; tongues are the only tongues,” implying, of course, that leaves were once talking—thick, fleshy leaves. In “Petrarch Watches the Moon Rise Over the Vaucluse,” time or the aging process go through several transformations, “The angel of age is a sleepy fellow, a/ shaggy woodman, a puked-out volcano.” Aging returns as a sunset in the book’s final poem, the misty and soothing “The Hour of Blue Snow.” The poem has a mythical feeling; a few deer creep out from darkness at this illusory hour and then evaporate:

As when the ancient gods

came down to wander their enchanted world.

Then I remember to breathe again,

and the blue snow shines inside me.

One’s breath, held for the entire book, is finally released.

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