Michael T. Young's fourth full-length collection, Mountain Climbing a River, is now available from Broadstone Books. You can also click the image to be taken to Amazon to order.
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Bio
Mountain Climbing a River is Michael T. Young's fourth collection. His third full-length collection, The Infinite Doctrine of Water, was longlisted for the Julie Suk Award. He received a Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award for Living in the Counterpoint. He received honorable mention for the New Jersey Poets Prize in 2022. His poetry has been featured on Verse Daily and The Writer’s Almanac. He lives with his wife and children in Jersey City, New Jersey.
Mountain Climbing a River is Michael T. Young's fourth collection. His third full-length collection, The Infinite Doctrine of Water, was longlisted for the Julie Suk Award. He received a Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award for Living in the Counterpoint. He received honorable mention for the New Jersey Poets Prize in 2022. His poetry has been featured on Verse Daily and The Writer’s Almanac. He lives with his wife and children in Jersey City, New Jersey.
Mountain Climbing a River begins with the “smell of gunpowder” and the truth of “White Privilege” that “When you’re not the target / you can ignore the gun.” But he forces the reader to recognize how we all are targets (and all complicit), how the monsters under his daughter’s bed – whether Nazis or climate change – are all too real. Which is to say this is not always a comfortable read, but it is a necessary one – one that expresses how language and memory matter, for otherwise we are left “not knowing who we are, without words, / without stories about where we came from / and the dream of where we’re going.” It also is hopeful, leaning into family and community “and how much more / we need each other to keep from drifting,” with
“the only certain outcome: that everybody drifting toward / each other, faster and faster, will meet at the center.”
--Broadstone Books
“the only certain outcome: that everybody drifting toward / each other, faster and faster, will meet at the center.”
--Broadstone Books
