Review: David Young knows where he's going

By WILLIAM CORBETT | October 27, 2010

I wonder what the connection is between his translating — in addition to Tu Fu he has done Rilke, Petrarch, and Miroslav Holub — and the poems in Field of Light and Shadow. Since translation is, however inspired you are, labor, you can clock in and clock out. That leads to the daily routine, the return to the desk and a poem in progress, that's implied by Young's love for sequences. This is certainly not true of all poets who translate, but there is a quality in Young's work that — well, I will quote the book's last line: "and drift like a boat into the distance." For Young, it has been not just the journey, but hundreds of different destinations.

Field Of Light And Shadow: Selected And New Poems | By David Young | Alfred A. Knopf | 304 Pages | $27.95

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REVIEW: DAVID YOUNG KNOWS WHERE HE'S GOING | October 27, 2010
David Young's Selected and New Poems is a good book by a good poet. You'll have to take my word for that, because I am not going to quote from his poems.