A poet I studied under at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Dean Young, has died. Like his good friend Tony Hoagland—another poet I studied under in Iowa City who passed—Dean was a complicated person. I’ll never forget our first conversation, which was about my poetry and flowers. RIP. 
(You’ll find that many poets have complicated feelings about mentors, former teachers, and poets whose work they once lionized. I can say that the kindest thing a teacher ever did for me was Peter Gizzi—a mensch—taking me to a bookstore to buy me the collected Wallace Stevens.)
(If you were to ask whose poetry “working poets” deeply respect but would also be a good entrance-point for any American or just English-speaker who hasn’t read a lot of poetry and wants to start, for much of my lifetime the first name people would have told you was Dean Young.)
Another Dean Young poem:
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