Böcker av Scot Young

from the preface: I read somewhere that poets write for themselves and the novelist writes for others. If this is in fact true, I still hope the reader will find something in these pages they can relate to or at least realize that they are not alone. To me, poetry is telling your story and sometimes the story of others.The majority of these poems were written before 2009. They are a part of me, a snapshot in time, like mom's old photo albums she would pull out when you really didn't want her to.The title, They Said I Wasn't College Material comes from a conversation and response I had with a high school counselor back in the early 70s. As adults and educators we like to pigeonhole children and track them as vocational or college bound without ever really getting to know them past the test score. They did a version of that in the 70s and continue to do that today. Oftentimes, we ignore some groups of children and they fall through the cracks. Their stories are equally important and you will find them here as well."They Said I Wasn't College Material by Scot Young is a collection that spans time and circumstances, by a poet willing to resurrect the sting of assumptions and expectations to turn the lens in the other direction. He challenges social gatekeeping, and the classist label culture that nurtures the privileged and pushes the rest of us toward their service. He understands what feeds self doubt and steers destiny away from us, and he goes after the source. His poems celebrate the capacity to experience and feel honestly, when that is often suppressed: "when young boys cried/wiped tears before dads could see." These poems convey love, nostalgia, hope, fear, anxiety, and more in connection with identity in a body of work that speaks to peeling back those expectations. Authenticity and humility draw people to connect with his poetry, and this is what he is after: "I only strive/to put one word in front of the other/ and hold it there long enough/ for it to matter/ to somebody." It matters to us, for sure. Young knows that crushing aspiration and potential crushes people, particularly at times when we have every right to see a future that is ours to shape. For those of us lucky to know Scot Young, we know that this is his cause- to remind us all of that most fundamental right. He shares what he has learned about the breakers and the broken, and he rejects the perpetuation of that power. Besides, there is dignity in choosing our own damage: "even bluebirds/ that are set free/ fly into windows."This is not the same as holding up the glass." -E. Lynn Alexander, Co-Founder and editor of Collapse Press"Scot Young has mastered the great poetic art of saying big things with a few, humble words. His latest collection, They Said I Wasn't College Material, is a straight forward, globe crossing, collage of spot on observations from a clear-eyed outlaw cowboy poet that found his own overgrown Ozark path from pen to paper. From the rowdy rodeo booze poems of a young bronc buster trying to keep himself together, to busted blue collar hopes, heartbreaking poems of lost sheep students, the tender apologies of a callous handed and feather-hearted father, and love poems so pretty you'll want to put them in a jar of water and leave them sitting on your kitchen counter so you can enjoy them for days. There's prose poems and short story snippets, and words all over the book, written in styles that can't be taught in classrooms, or replicated in workshops, they must be experienced and felt. Like all good literature, this book will hover in the weather patterns of our hearts for days."-Dan Denton, blue collar writer. author of The Dead and the Desperate.

"With a sober, unflinching eye, poet Scot Young unfurls sketch after sketch of the quiet awe of the country life, the animal and plant kingdom at odds with barbed wire and rusty trucks emphasizing the tending of a wild land. The absurd, and the occasional nod to the occasional hero ("brautigan is taller/than a rainbow breaking the/surface of quiet") the poet turns the haiku form on its head as he hybridizes the form with the sonnet, with free flowing variations along the way, and in doing so, Scot continues to show us how the message informs the form, but also how the form informs the message."-Paul Corman-Roberts, Beast Crawl Literary Festival, Operations"Inspired by the likes of Kerouac, Ginsberg, Todd Moore, and others who have taken stabs at the American Haiku, Young takes the ever-evolving form and makes it his own. While the poems here vary in length and style, they all carry the music and the spirit of the more traditional form. Full of stark imagery both personal and universal, the poems flow from one to the next seamlessly carrying the reader along."-William Taylor, Jr., A Room Above a Convenience Store (Roadside Press).""If you're a fan of tradition, Scot Young's American Haiku may just take you by surprise, but what else is tradition there for than to give those seeking different paths in this world something to break away from. Young does just that, coming closer to modern poets like Ted Berrigan or Cid Corman than those writers of more formal haiku, but with a more Midwestern spin on things, words hung together by rural poverty, by the peace found in a quiet breeze, by all of the things we turn away from and those we rarely take the time to notice."-John Dorsey, Pocatello Wildflower"In this fine collection of unconventional haiku, Scot Young successfully breaks all the rules and offers us sequenced and sonnet haiku, one-word lines and other breaks from the traditional three-line haiku. He covers a wide array of topics from observations about nature to poverty, love, road kill, fish, animals, and education. The poems include nods to his poetic heroes including jazz stars, Bob Marley, Basho, Bob Dylan, Richard Brautigan, and Charles Bukowski. These poems are both thoughtful and visceral, and any reader will find plenty to enjoy and want to carry around to reread for when the need arises."-Maryfrances Wagner, Missouri's 6th Poet Laureate,The Immigrants New Camera (Spartan Press)"As poets, we spend much of our lives exploring the relationship of ourselves to the world. This can be a complicated endeavor, but Scot Young's American Haiku is familiar and delicate, elegant even. He has reimagined the haiku in a way that makes sense for him, pulling at the rebel ghosts of the forefathers of the western haiku. Scot is able to capture those moments in life that are often passed over as unimportant or insignificant. His ability to see the depth of a moment and carve out the best part is one of the best things about this collection."-Aleathia Drehmer, author of Layers of Half-Sung Hymns (Cajun Mutt Press)

"You can almost smell the Brut cologne wafting through the pages as you read Scot Young''s new book of poetry, All Around Cowboy.  The book is filled with firsts: first rock gig, first ballgame, first love crush, first Dodge. He writes of his early dreams back home, Mom and Dad at the center, a child''s mind running wild with empathy, considering young mothers from strange towns he''s never met, wondering if they too blow bubbles in their dreams. The poems about his barfly father are crushing. Plainly said, brick by brick, the words lay out like a low budget 70''s cop caper. You see every move before your eyes, and it''s heavy at times. And it''s all there, beyond the tavern dust. And Young is never alone. Even when the poet is struggling through a sleepless night, he sniffs at the air and listens quietly for anything recognizable in the house - the smell of cigarettes, the squeak of linoleum - and it''s in those moments where the poets words are delivered so powerfully."  -Rob Azevedo, Turning on the Wasp (Kung Fu                       Treachery Press, 2020)"Scot Young may not want to hear this, but he isn''t a cowboy, not in the movie poster sense anyway. This book, his first, is the history of the man he''s become, stronger than his heroes Richard Brautigan and Charles Bukowski, educating young people, publishing countless others without thought given to personal reward, often helping them when they''re not in a position to help themselves, opening his heart and sharing a great love of literature, Scot Young is a great poet, but anyone can do that, he''s an even greater man, so I take it back, maybe he is a cowboy, but let''s be clear, John Wayne would never have the balls to be Scot Young."-John Dorsey, Author of The Prettiest Girl at the                      Dance∩╗┐"A beautiful, touching and often insightful journey that hits its mark, Scot Young''s All Around Cowboy is a country rock rodeo get down. A place suspended in time where Mickey Mantle meets Jack Kerouac on the cosmic baseball diamond with Hendrix on guitar and a lonesome Whippoorwill calling the play by play in the voice of Hank Williams singing my jukebox''s got a hole in it. A down to earth collection of first love, brotherly love and true love straight from the heart, these poems are life and death lessons swimming in a swirling beer while sitting in an old school bar called father''s office somewhere in the land of sky blue waters." - S.A. Griffin"When archeology digs up a book of poetry from this changing planet, it will reveal a bit of "Herodotus Americana" as Scot Young''s good cowboy rides into the sunset of the greatest generation and plays the last number on the jukebox. Like the songs, the poems of tragedy and joys, from mini skirts to baseball, grows up and glows up in the middle of the country''s golden era of post war years from the 50''s to 70''s. This all around cowboy knew the greats, from "Butterfly" to "Buk" while metaphorically herding the storm clouds out of the sky. Tragic, rough & rowdy, hip and cool, delicate for the heart and head, his poems, like Robinson, hits the balls and touches all bases, a book I surely dig and so will you, with "Hey good lookin''" on the cover times two. Plus, one can learn his great definition of poetry and discover the worst insult in Western idiom."- Charles Plymell