Dean Young’s books  include Bender: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2012); Primitive Mentor(University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008); Embryoyo(McSweeney's, 2007); Ready-Made Bouquet (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005); and Elegy on Toy Piano (2005), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He is also the author of The Art of Recklessness: Poetry as Assertive Force and Contradiction (Graywolf Press, 2010), a book of prose about poetry.