It's hard to know what to say about a poet that struck me so powerfully the way C. Dale Young did. The Day Underneath the Day is Young's first collection, but it's as polished and tight as the later works of more seasoned poets.
Young has an M.D. degree from the University of Florida and practices medicine at the University of California San Francisco. His medical background is evident in many of his poems, such as "Complaint of the Medical Illustrator":
Here is the incision;
it will be your gateway to the afterlife.
Pull the skin back slowly.
The dead will tolerate only so much disturbance.
The blood you believed
surrounded organs and muscle is not here, is it?
Young's poetry tends toward the dark, heavy and thought-provoking. His use of imagery is strong with great attention to detail, like in these lines from "Minutiae":
Should I begin with the walls
of the church, crumbled
under the weight of the flames?
Should I begin with the stained glass
now a speculated pool of amethyst
come to rest against a metal beam?
Begin with the absent crucifix
or the tabernacle door wide open?
One could say Young is a very organic poet, with his attention to the body and also to nature. Young grew up in the Caribbean and South Florida, so his poems are peppered with the landscape of the Gulf and tropics. Young takes you to the islands of the Caribbean with his words, with penetrating descriptions such as this from "Aubade," written about Ocho Rios, Jamaica:
This morning, the tide left us
nothing exemplary to peruse--
no whip-length kelp rusted with sunlight,
no shells spiraling point to rim
hinting that someone should listen
to their tired recollections of the sea.
C. Dale Young is definitely a poet to watch. A first book as strong as The Day Underneath the Day leaves me wanting to read more.
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