All Quiet on the Eastern Front

I am pondering a massive amount of writing in August, an unofficial NaPoWriMo; if you'd be interested in being part of a group committed to posting (or otherwise sharing) daily drafts, backchannel me.

For inspiration, I've been thinking about Dean Young's work:

Poem Without Forgiveness

The husband wants to be taken back
into the family after behaving terribly,
but nothing can be taken back,
not the leaves by the trees, the rain
by the clouds. You want to take back
the ugly thing you said, but some shrapnel
remains in the wound, some mud.
Night after night Tybalt’s stabbed
so the lovers are ground in mechanical
aftermath. Think of the gunk that never
comes off the roasting pan, the goofs
of a diamond cutter. But wasn’t it
electricity’s blunder into inert clay
that started this whole mess, the I-
echo in the head, a marriage begun
with a fender bender, a sneeze,
a mutation, a raid, an irrevocable
fuckup. So in the meantime: epoxy,
the dog barking at who knows what,
signals mixed up like a dumped-out tray
of printer’s type. Some piece of you
stays in me and I’ll never give it back.
The heart hoards its thorns
just as the rose profligates.
Just because you’ve had enough
doesn’t mean you wanted too much.

--Dean Young

(Originally published in The Paris Review; thanks to Don for pointing it out.)

This is the bio note Young used in last year's July/August issue of POETRY:

"Dean Young is the pseudonym of a consortium of rhinos and giraffes intent upon destroying the educational system as we know it. He "teaches" at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, source of the debasement of all culture. If only William Logan could come to the rescue!"

Somehow, I think Bill Logan would be only too happy to comply.