Primitive Mentor

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 21 JAN 2008

The prolific Young (Embryoyo) sometimes seems a creature of mere whimsy, spinning provocative sentences almost at random, one after another; at other times he's a dynamo of invention, whose ceaseless changes of mood and topics, absurd connections between incompatible tones, explicitly sexual energies and underlying unease more than justify his recent prominence and his obvious influence over so many younger American poets. Between its postsurrealist comic claims ("In the desert I feel like I'm made/ entirely of broccoli") and its fun with shock value ("We sniff glue./ I have a medium-sized White House in my sperm"), this ninth book will certainly please fans. Yet the volume also finds Young reaching more often for pathos and earnest representations of pain. One of the best poems begins, "Shouldn't someone have run for help by now?" Another begins, "You must be careful eating thorns." The moments of lament (evoking, at times, Wallace Stevens) allow Young to slow the book down, to make not only a poetry to caricature our contemporary culture (suffused as we are with so much information) but also a verse suffused with halting regret: these saddest of Young's poems might even bring prior doubters into his fold.