Black Lab

Distinguished translator and poet offers readers his tenth collection of poems with this gorgeous cycle attuned to the Midwestern seasons, both literary and in emotion. Young's introspection takes readers on a tour of his psychic landscapes as the poet copes with the loss of his father and remembers his wife, Choloe, to cancer, a loss still lingering after several decades. The title of the collection draws on the reflections taken from companionship with his Black Labrador, Nemo. Young also shows his respect for the Chinese monsters whose aesthetic has shaped his own with a deep meditation on nature, the mysterious goodness of life's intimate experiences, and the language that embodies it.