Overview

American Analects uses the Analects of Confucius as an inspiration to mediate upon the life, death, and the subsequent loss of the poet's influential, beloved mentor-the painter Gene Holtan. These poems are juxtaposed with poems about other losses-of parents, of friends and friends of friends. Some of these deaths were caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, others by age and the inescapable journey we all take. Still, this is not a dour book. Many poems celebrate our ability to inspire, to comfort, and to nurture one another, and the collection is leavened with poems about family, about poetry, and about the healing influence of landscape and of nature. In the end, American Analects is about resiliency, about moving on from personal loss, from the pandemic, and from catastrophic fires, to rejoice in what remains. These poems encourage us to acknowledge the fragility of our lives and of those we love, while we celebrate those who guide us, even in memory.

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9780892555925

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Gary Young is a poet and artist whose many honors include recognition from the Poetry Society of America, from which he has received the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award (2013), the Shelley Memorial Award (2009), the William Carlos Williams Award (2003), and the Lyric Poem Award (2001). He is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, and the Vogelstein Foundation among others. He was the Santa Cruz County Artist of the Year (2012) and the first Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County (2010-2011). He has also received numerous prizes including a Pushcart Prize, and various fellowships and residencies. Gary is the author of several collections of poetry, most recently That's What I Thought (2018), the 2017 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor's Choice Award from Persea Books, and Precious Mirror (2018), translations of the calligraphy and poems of Kobun Chino Ottawa Roshi, from White Pine Press.

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