Torn
"C. Dale Young's latest book of poems,Torn,strikes me as haunted: the speakers are preoccupied with human frailty, strength, and lust; with a complex and contradictory relationship with God; and with violence in forms small and large. Particularly haunted--and haunting--are  the poems in the book's third section, which grapple with the speaker's  responsibility and vulnerability as a doctor." --Kenyon Review Online"Young's poems are so fierce and serrated. Young is both a poet and a doctor. Those two practices converge with harrowing force in the title poem, "Torn," [and] take a striking turn at the end, a turn that hints at the kind  of hard insight Young surely has access to through his medical work."--New York Times Book Review"On the surface, the overriding wisdom ofTornmight seem to be that we cannot rely on art to tell us the whole truth or even depend upon those who are supposed to protect us. And yet the book is also evidence of a poet who is compelled to make visible the darkness around us. Whether or not that itself is an act of tenderness, Young refuses to  say for certain. And that is what makes his poetry a crucible where readers must confront their own beliefs--about poetry, society, and themselves." --Christopher Hennessy,Ploughshares"Like medicine, poetry may demand that we treat wounds, that we understand mortality, that we apply all possible skill to the often messy terrain of human life. But poetry can also demand that we [...] leave torn what is torn. This is Young's great gift."--Peter Campion,Los Angeles Review of Books"Young is a doctor as well as a poet, andTorndemonstrates a skilled physician's combination of empathy and formal precision." --citation fromNPR's list of the eight best poetry collections published in 2011“Most of the poems in Young's articulate and honest third collection say something to, and about, the facts of his life: his Catholic and Latino heritage, his years spent in Boston, his residence in San Francisco, his training as a physician, and his self-discovery as a gay man. "Dear God, what was it you placed in the heart," he asks, "not of necessity, but because it is the center/ of all moral forces and impulses?" Such slightly elevated language and the sound effects that go with it (occasional rhyme, the specter of pentameter) serves Young well, though his earnestness can topple over into predictability: "We choose not to believe./ We continue living. We refuse to grieve." When he writes about his medical education, however, in the last part of the book, Young (The Second Person) acquires a harsh light that belongs to him alone: we see the "lime-like pale green" of "a room in which to dissect cadavers," we hear of the thoughtless doctor who ‘announced to everyone that you were the best/ minority student she had ever had," and we learn how Young defines " ‘the healing arts,'/ that strange desire to fix the human machine.’”—Publishers Weekly